Abstract: Coping capacities (CCs) are often implemented at Critical Infrastructure (CI) facilities to ensure a continuous supply of vital services and products for a population during lifeline disruptions. Through various restrictions, these redundant backups are frequently limited and, hence, only allow a supply continuity for a short duration. The capacity depletes with the duration of the disruptions. In this paper, we discuss how this decrease is evaluated in disaster management. To get an enhanced insight, we introduce to a representative decision problem and used a demonstrative example of a power outage to discuss how decision maker consider the effect of CC depletion and how analytical approaches could address this issue. For doing so an expert survey and an analytical approach were implemented and applied. The comparison and the discussion of the results motivate further research directions on this topic.

Abstract: Rio de Janeiro?s Integrated Command and Control Center (CICC-RJ ) has already seen duty in several large scale events which happened in town, some planned, others not. CICC-RJ is part of Rio de Janeiro state?s response to the Brazilian national government?s mandate to improve the state?s ability to anticipate and respond coherently to public safety events in the region. Its infrastructure is intended to enable and promote local agencies? ability to anticipate, plan, monitor, and respond to public safety events by sharing operational intelligence and acting in concert. The aim of this paper is to explore some of the CICC-RJ issues where fragility and resilience were at play during the operational management of the 2014 World Cup in Rio de Janeiro, as the CICC-RJ seeks to enhance its capabilities to promote resilience in preparation for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.

Abstract: The risk of rainstorm disaster is expected to increase with rising disaster losses as a consequence. Besides the uncertainty of frequency and severity of rainfalls, it can also be attributed to the expansion of settlement and industrial areas and the resulting accumulation of population and assets. Therefore, it?s important to both analyze historical precipitation and estimate land use condition. In this study, the data of land use status and historical heavy rainfalls of 16 districts in Beijing are collected to obtain the exposure level zoning map and carry out a comprehensive analysis. This is followed by Spearman?s rank correlation analysis and the correlations between the exposure and disaster losses have been discussed. This study presents a new perspective of exposure assessment, and some useful ideas about city planning and management are proposed in view of the inevitable trend of rapid urbanization in China.

Abstract: It is important to forecast the pedestrian flows for organizing crowd activities and making risk assessments. In this article, the daily pedestrian flows in the Tiananmen Square are forecasted based on historical data, the distribution of holidays and weather conditions including rain, wind, temperature, relative humidity, and AQI (Air Quality Index). Three different methods have been discussed and the Support Vector Regression based on the Adaptive Particle Swarm Optimization (APSO-SVR) has been proved the most reliable and accurate model to forecast the daily pedestrian flows. The results of this paper can help to conduct security pre-warning system and enhance emergency preparedness and management for crowd activities.

Abstract: Identifying the assets of a community that are part of its Critical Infrastructure (CI) is a crucial task in emergency planning. However, this task can prove very challenging due to the costs involved in defining the methodology and gathering the necessary data. Volunteered Geographic Information from collaborative maps such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) may be able to make a contribution in this context, since it contains valuable local knowledge. However, research is still due to assess the quality of OSM for the particular purpose of identifying critical assets. To fill this gap, this paper proposes a catalogue of critical asset types, based on the analysis of different reference frameworks. We thus analyze how good the emergent OSM data model is for representing these asset types, by verifying whether they can be mapped to tags used by the OSM community. Results show that critical asset types of all selected sectors and branches are well represented in OSM.

Abstract: The evaluation of the quality of emergency plans is an unresolved issue. While most research efforts have focused on the definition and improvement of planning methods and the associated tools, a reference framework allowing the assessment of emergency plans is still missing. In this paper, we report our initial work towards the definition of a quality framework for emergency plan management. To create it, we are borrowing results from more than one century of research on quality methods, with special emphasis in the newest Total Quality Management approaches that pay attention to technical, human and strategic concerns during the plan development process. The QuEP framework defines a number of planning principles and practices to define a maturity-driven layered model for the evaluation of organizations. We list the principles and practices, and describe its potential to be integrated with other emergency plan management frameworks.

Abstract: National information and situation centers are faced with rising information needs and the question of how to prepare for unexpected situations. One promising development is the access to vastly growing data produced by distributed sensors and a socially networked society. Current emergency information systems are limited in the amount of complex data they can process and interpret in real-time and provide only partially integrated prediction and alarming capabilities. In this paper we present a novel approach to build a new type of automated and scalable information systems that intelligently make use of massive streams of structured and unstructured data and incorporate human feedback for automated incident detection and learning. Big data technologies, uncertainty handling and privacy-by-design are employed to match end-user system requirements. We share first experiences analyzing data from the centennial flood in Germany 2013.

Abstract: Public safety organizations include emergency and law enforcement agencies, fire departments, rescue squads, and Emergency Medical Services (EMS). In response to increasing threats of terrorism and natural disasters, safety and security personnel must overcome technology barriers to enhance their efficiency, especially in the neuralgic section of information exchange. Limited availability of information hinders the response time and decision making process. Efficient communications supported by interoperable technology are vital to the situational awareness, scalability, and effectiveness of incident response. This paper?s prime objective is the review of available information systems than can be used to support and assist security agencies.

Abstract: In order to be proactive to accidents, there is a need to limit systems? threats and vulnerabilities by being able to perceive and comprehend them as early as possible. Under this notion, the concept of ?risk Situation Awareness provision capability? is introduced, indicating that the elements of a system, tangible or not, have an impact on the enhancement or degradation of the awareness, in reference to its threats and vulnerabilities. As a means of measuring this capability, a methodology, based on existing yet not combined methods, i.e. STPA hazard analysis, EWaSAP early warning sign identification approach, and dissimilarity measures, is offered. This paper looks at analogous SA measurement techniques and finally discusses some limitations and future research directions.

Abstract: Evacuation models can be used to determine evacuation capacity, by estimating the time required for evacuating populations to leave areas exposed to a hazard. Disaster management practices and evacuation modeling are generally carried out to prepare for ?worst-case? conditions. However, hazard severity is highly variable. Performing evacuation modeling for multiple hazard scenarios may provide flexibility and a comprehensive understanding of evacuation capacity. A case study was undertaken to analyze the merit of scenario-based evacuation modeling. Results demonstrate a difference in clearance time between maximum and historic tsunami scenario modeling. During a smaller-scale event, allowing the maximum scenario population to evacuate can add congestion and inhibit evacuation of at-risk populations. Managing evacuation can improve evacuation efficiency by preventing unneeded congestion. Results show that traditional worst-case-scenario modeling may lead to overestimation of time needed to evacuate. Planning under such a scenario may increase risk to smaller-scale hazards.

Abstract: Natural and man-made hazards are increasingly threatening modern societies. Therefore Turoff, Hiltz, Bañuls and Van Den Eede (2013) highlight the need for boosting efforts in planning for emergencies. Advanced early warning systems (EWS) provide opportunities to increase the resilience of societies. Warning via mobile phones is considered to be the best way of alerting but few public authorities already use this warning channel. EWS also help to protect property but their implementation requires significant investments. Cost-benefit estimations are needed for public authorities, insurance companies and the users, particularly private households and enterprises. This paper contributes a disaster-independent formula to disaster research with specific applications for hydrological hazards. Illustrated by a heavy rain scenario, it shows, in particular, the benefits of EWS for companies. A specific focus is put on lead time aspects.

Abstract: Recent flooding events happening in our city demonstrate frequency and severity of floods in the UK, highlighting the need to plan and prepare, and efficiently defend. Different from the numerous evacuation model and optimization algorithms, this paper aims to address flood evacuation planning with flood inundation as inputs. A dynamic flooding model and prediction to estimate the development of both surface water and flooding from rivers and watercourses has been fed into evacuation planning at various levels. A three-step approach is proposed. The first step is to identify assembly point designation. The second step is to find the candidate shortest path from each assembly point to all safe areas for all evacuees with consideration of possible inundation. The last step is to determine the optimal safe area for evacuees in the inundation area. The work presented in this paper has emphasized timing issue in evacuation planning. A case study is given to illustrate the use of the approach.