Design of a multi-hazard collaborative system for scenario-based response planning

Abstract

Recent natural and man-made disasters have affected multiple disaster management organizations, spanning multiple jurisdictions and countries. Examples are the extreme forest fires in France in 2016 and Portugal in 2017 and widespread flood events in Austria and the Czech Republic in 2013 and in Serbia and Croatia in 2014. Following the initial disaster event, cascading effects can further amplify the degree and complexity of disaster situations. This imposes a high demand of intra- and crossorganizational communication and cooperation - not only during the response phase, but increasingly also in the preparedness phase. An effective coordinated response requires a cohesive situation and risk assessment based on reliable information and a reasonable strategy and plan formulation. Our goal is to design and develop a system for improving response planning strategies and scenario building and facilitating organizational coordination among many actors. The designed solution includes a wide range of support tools to be used operationally by a large variety of stakeholders (firefighting units, medical emergency services, police departments, civil protection units and Command and Control Centres) and was designed with active participation of end users from these fields. In this regard, this work-in-progress paper presents and explains the design methodology chosen, the architecture and tools of the system developed in the ongoing EU H2020 project HEIMDALL.