Abstract: The project Systemic Pandemic Risk Management (SPRM), funded by the Research Council of Norway, has developed methods to assess and manage pandemic systemic risks. The project consortium includes an enterprise leading the project, public partners and research institutions in Norway, Sweden, and Italy. Kristiansand municipality, a partner in the SPRM project, adopted the project methods to assess and manage systemic risks. Based on a scenario about the potential spread patterns of the COVID-19 Omicron variant developed by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, staff from Kristiansand employed the SPRM project’s approach to facilitate systemic risk assessment and management workshops. Practitioners and decision-makers from the main hospital in the Agder county and several municipalities proposed risks, their causal consequences and identified practical and impactful mitigation strategies. The strategies were implemented at the county level. The approach can improve handling of systemic risk scenarios beyond pandemics.

Abstract: Owing to the complexity of Critical Infrastructures and the richness of issues to analyze, numerous approaches are used to model the behavior of CIs. Organizations having homeland security as mission often conduct desktop-based simulations using judgmental assessment of CI interdependencies and cascading failures. Expert estimates concern direct effects between the originally disrupted CI sector and other sectors. To better understand the magnitude of aggregate cascading effects, we developed a system dynamics model that uses expert estimates of cascading failures to compare the aggregate effect of cascading failures with the primary direct cascading failures. We find that the aggregate effect of compounded cascading failures becomes significantly greater than the primary cascading failures the longer the duration of the original disruption becomes. Our conceptually simple system dynamics model could be used to improve desktop-based exercises, since it illustrates consequences that go beyond judgmental assessment.

Abstract: Offshore wind farms in the German North and Baltic Seas have a key role to play in the context of the shift towards renewable energy and in securing electricity supplies in the future. At the same time, however, shipping routes in the North and Baltic Seas are among the busiest in the world, wind farms are increasingly being operated unmanned and conflicts increasingly involve a hybrid element. From these constellations and competing interests, various risk and threat scenarios emerge. By means of a survey among experts from offshore wind industry, this paper first captures the subjective assessment of the risk situation in order to subsequently develop an approach for their evaluation. The paper uses Bayesian networks in order to enable a risk assessment also under inclusion of uncertain parameters.

Abstract: This work in progress paper presents an initial evaluation of the observation protocol of the Team Resilience Assessment Method for Simulation (TRAMS) conducted in a crisis response simulation project. TRAMS is designed to assess the resilience of crisis response teams. The TRAMS observation protocol uses six core resilience functions from the Systemic Resilience Model as its theoretical foundation. Three independent observers used the protocol during a pilot study and six actual simulation games. Strategies relating to three out of six core resilience functions could be identified. The observations made were distributed similarly among the observers, indicating that the components of the TRAMS protocol are stable enough to continue developing the protocol. This study describes changes made to the protocol since the original design, and describes how the strategies relating to the six core resilience functions can be identified in the simulation games.

Abstract: Scenarios are frequently used in Emergency Planning and Preparedness. These scenarios are developed based on the hypothesis of occurrence or not of significant events. This is a complex process because of the interrelations between events. This fact, along with the uncertainty about the occurrence or non-occurrence of the events, makes the scenario generation process a challenging issue for emergency managers. In this work a new step-by-step model for clustering scenarios via cross-impact is proposed. The authors. proposal adds tools for detecting critical events and graphical representation to the previous scenario-generation methods based on Cross-Impact Analysis. Moreover, it allows working with large sets of events without using great computational infrastructures. These contributions are expected to be useful for supporting the analysis of critical events and risk assessment tasks in Emergency Planning and Preparedness. Operational issues and practical implications of the model are discussed by means of an example.

Abstract: Currently, there is a lack of assessment approaches for evaluation of resilient capabilities in simulation games. This paper presents work-in-progress to create such an instrument to be used in crisis management simulation games for the fuel, food, and finance sectors. The “Team Resilience Assessment Method for Simulation” (TRAMS) is based on the Systemic Resilience Model and departs from the assumption that resilient crisis management teams will be able to develop strategies for assuring that anticipation, monitoring, response, recovery, and learning are established and maintained in their respective organizations as well as in the crisis management team. A prototype version of the TRAMS, based on the experiences of representatives from the involved sectors and firmly related to resilience theory, is presented and discussed. The TRAMS instrument will be tested in 30 planned simulations games including participants from the fuel, food, and finance sectors.

Abstract: Several studies and observations regarding past earthquakes such as 1989 Loma Prieta, 1994 Northridge, or 1999 Marmara earthquakes have shown the importance of lifeline systems functionality on response and recovery efforts. The general direction of studies on simulating lifelines seismic performance is towards achieving more accurate models to represent the system behavior. The methodology presented in this paper is a product of research conducted in the Mid-America Earthquake Center. Electric power, potable water, and natural gas networks are modeled as interacting systems where the state of one network is influenced by the state of another network. Interdependent network analysis methodology provides information on operational aspects of lifeline networks in post-seismic conditions in addition to structural damage assessment. These results are achieved by different components of the tool which are classified as structural and topological. The topological component analyzes the post seismic operability of the lifeline networks based on the damage assessment outcome of the structural model. Following an overview of the models, potential utilizations in different phases of disaster management are briefly discussed.

Abstract: Project management has become a standard in business. Unfortunately, the projects as well as companies are increasingly subject to major disruptions. In this context, it is of prime importance to have the ability to manage the risks inherent to these projects to best achieve their objectives. The existing approaches of crisis management in the literature no longer seem to be adapted to this new normality. The future of research lies in a more systematic crisis assessment and a better conceptualization of the uncertainty associated with risks. It is necessary to rely on the collection of heterogeneous data in order to maximize the understanding of the project environment and to find a way that best describes and visualizes the influence of crises on the project management processes. This article uses the POD approach and applies it in the context of project management to address these issues.

Abstract: Modeling the interaction between interdependent systems in dynamic environments represents a promising approach to enabling communities to assess and manage the recurring risk to which they are exposed. We frame the problem as a complex, adaptive system, examining the interaction between transportation and emergency response as a socio-technical system. Using methods of spatial and statistical analysis, we overlaid the engineered transportation system on the organizational emergency response system to identify the thresholds of fragility in each. We present a research design and preliminary results from a small-scale study conducted in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Region that examined the interaction between the transportation and emergency response systems. These results informed the design of a Situational Assessment Module for emergency managers, currently under development at the University of Pittsburgh.

Abstract: Effective management of infrastructural networks in the case of a crisis requires a prior analysis of the vulnerability of spatial networks and identification of critical locations where an interdiction would cause most damage and disruption. This paper presents a preliminary study into how a graph theoretic structural analysis could be used for this purpose. Centrality measures are combined with a dual graph modelling approach in order to identify critical locations in a spatial network. The results of a case study on a street network of a small area in the city of Helsinki indicate that 'betweenness' is the most promising centrality measure for this purpose. Other measures and properties of graphs are under consideration for eventually developing a risk model not only for one but for a group of co-located spatial networks.

Abstract: Crisis management (CM) is an aspect of command and control characterized by complexity, uncertainty, and severe time pressure. To address these challenges, CM teams can use collaborative work support systems (CWSS) to help plan their intervention and coordination activities. However, the use of CWSS is not necessarily beneficial and in some cases, can impede more than augment performance. Hence, it is essential to understand the impact of a CWSS on team performance and CM teamwork. We have developed a methodology to assess the effectiveness of CWSS by comparing the use of an interactive Smartboard with that of a traditional topographic map during team planning activities. To do so, a dynamic CM situation is simulated using a forest firefighting functional simulation – the C3Fire microworld. We compared two groups of participants on the basis of performance, communication, coordination efficiency, and planning quality. Based on a preliminary analysis, in comparison to maps, the use of a CWSS seems to be beneficial to planning activities and CM coordination. At this point the main contribution of the current on-going project is to provide a method and metrics for the objective assessment of new technology in the context of CM.

Abstract: A suite of post-earthquake information products and assessment tools are produced and distributed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC). These products range from the rapid determination of earthquake magnitude and location to tools that provide situational awareness following earthquake catastrophes. The NEIC distributes earthquake location, magnitude, and supporting information through many sources including, text message, pager, and the Internet (e-mail, web-pages and RSS feeds). To aid in the rapid determination of an earthquake's impact, the NEIC has developed tools to 1) map the observed shaking intensity reported from the region affected by the earthquake (Community Internet Intensity Maps), and 2) quantify the number of people exposed to severe shaking (Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response).

Abstract: Telecommunication services are essential to modern information systems, especially so for crisis management. Telecoms systems are complex and difficult to analyse. Current risk assessment methods are either not used because of their complexity, or lack rigorous argumentation to justify their results because they are oversimplified. Our challenge has been to develop a risk assessment method that is both usable in practice and delivers understandable arguments to explain and justify its risk evaluations. After experiments to validate the method in laboratory environments, we now present the first results from successful application with practitioners in a regional crisis organization that provides evidence about the practical usability of the method.