Presentation used for the lecture at the 4th ISCRAM Summer School in Tilburg, the Netherlands.

1. Developing disaster alert and impact systemsLecture at the ISCRAM Summer School19 August 2011 Tom De Groeve Joint Research Centre of the European Commission ISCRAM Summer School 2011

2. Red earthquake alert ISCRAM Summer School 2011

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6. Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) GDACS: system for international disaster response community Information gap in the initial response phase Monitoring Impact / risk analysis Information integration 15000 active users of 212 countries Secretariat: OCHA Open access, standards OGC, RSS GLIDE number JRC’s role: alert and monitoring system Earthquakes and tsunamis 13 scientific partners Tsunami modelling Impact modelling Tropical cyclones 2 scientific partners Wind modelling Impact modelling Floods 16 scientific partners Detection Impact modelling Extra-tropical windstorms Volcanoes Expert meeting on Early Warning Systems, 28 April 2011

7. Japan tsunami 20 minutes: Orange tsunami alert (2.1m waves, M7.9) 42 minutes: Red tsunami alert (8.6m waves, M8.8) Alerts sent to 15000 users Only global system sending alerts based on tsunami wave heights Later, JRC released several manual reports on the risk in Japan and the Pacific Expert meeting on Early Warning Systems, 28 April 2011

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11. Lecture overview Developing disaster alert and impact systems Introduction Humanitarian assistance, response and GDACS Natural hazards Basic physics Consequence analysis GIS data and models Community Remote Sensing Use of Social media ISCRAM Summer School 2011

13. International Emergency Management Partner organisations European Union United Nations World Bank African Union Social Networking Technologies for Emergency Management, October 27, 2010, Washington International Humanitarian and Emergency Response

14. Global Disaster Alert and Coordination Systemfor more effective and efficient humanitarian responsewww. .org an example of a disaster alert and impact system for international humanitarian assistance ISCRAM Summer School 2011

15. International humanitarian aid A complex system with many stakeholders No “Command and Control Centre” Help is based on scarce information on the disaster What, when, how, who? Decisions must be made very quickly (within 72h) ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Coordination: UN OCHA Humanitarian Aid Flow Donors ECHO, etc. Charity UN WFP,HCR… Int. NGOs IFRC, MsF Local Government Local NGOs Victims

16. ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Evacuation Search and rescue

17. ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Refugee management Refugee camp, Lukole, Tanzania

18. Inefficiencies in humanitarian response Monitoring disasters 24/7 monitoring capacity is expensive Many heterogeneous sources of natural hazard monitoring  hard to keep up to date Response can be delayed because Not alerted / monitored Affected government does not appeal Not sure if others respond Size and type of response must be needs driven (Madrid Declaration 1995) Size of disaster can be under/overestimated Information on needs can be incomplete, vague, lacking ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Is it a disaster?? How many people?? What are the needs?? Who will respond?? What is offered?? What is needed now?? What is the damage?? time

19. Needs-driven response: what are the needs? OCHA Cluster approach* Camp Coordination and Camp Management Logistics Early Recovery Emergency Telecommunications Emergency Shelter Health Nutrition Protection Water, Sanitation and Hygiene ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Information needs for responders Relief needs for affected population (with information need, e.g. affected population) * OCHA, 2006. Appeal for improving Humanitarian Response Capacity: Cluster 2006

20. Sources of situational information Early warning and alert systems Timely knowledge about the occurrence of a natural hazard Geophysical, meteorological measurement systems Automated consequence analysis Modelling the likely impact Social media Timely source, not always reliable Very hard to turn into useful information International media Rich source, very timely but not always true and complete ISCRAM Summer School 2011

21. Sources of situational information Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA): Mandate to coordinate humanitarian response Sends disaster assessment and coordination (UNDAC) teams, search and rescue teams (through the INSARAG network) Sets up an On Site Operations Coordination Centre (OSOCC), humanitarian information centres (HIC) Disseminates all information through ReliefWeb Local government, with its local emergency management authority (LEMA): Main source for official information on the scale of the disaster ISCRAM Summer School 2011

22. Sources of situational information Alert systems CAT Social Media Media UN-OCHA LEMA ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Reliability Timeliness

23. Information needs versus sources ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Early warning or alert Automated consequence analysis Media OCHA LEMA Situation Source contains information for need X

24. Information needs versus sources ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Need clusters Source contains information for need X

25. Role of information systems ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Early warning or alert systems Automated consequence analysis GIS based analysis, real-time or based on scenarios Media Automated intelligent monitoring OSOCC / LEMA Web based “Virtual” OSOCC Web Portal technology Addressed (partially) by GDACS

26. Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System a EU and UN initiative European Union Humanitarian aid 2004 Member states: € 867 million European Commission € 570m 53% of official dev. Aid (ODA) Joint Research Centre ISCRAM Summer School 2011 United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

28. Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System GDACS provides a systematic approach for Predictable information of Predictable quality at Predictable time Through A network of computer systems and Internet technology; Computer modeling Mainly task of JRC A network of disaster managers 24/7 duty; connected to authorities Mainly task of OCHA ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Alert Model results Media analysis Field Missions (Search & Rescue) Remote Sensing damage analysis time

29. Objective: “What are the latest disasters?” ISCRAM Summer School 2011

30. Objective: “Is an event of humanitarian concern?” The objective is to distinguish between large earthquake in unpopulated or resilient regions smaller earthquake in highly populated and vulnerable regions ISCRAM Summer School 2011 M 6.7 M 6.0

31. GDACS automatic and manual event analysis ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Automatic information collection Alert Coordination Tsunami Warning Networks Disaster Level II Alert Disaster Level I Alert Earthquake Observation Networks Automatic Evaluation of scale of disaster Manual Evaluation of scale of disaster Start of coordi-nation Flood Watch Networks Event Alerts Trop. Cyclone Observation Networks Geographical, Socio-economic, population data Eye witness and Field information Gov, IFRC, ECHO, NGO

33. Critical infrastructureNuclear plants near New Orleans

34. Disaster alert Automatic monitoring: Earthquake, Tsunami, Cyclone, Floods, Volcanoes Automatic GIS consequence analysis Classification:  Alerting system SMS, Fax, Email ISCRAM Summer School 2011

35. Critical infrastructure: e.g. tropical cyclones Bottleneck: global databases Now: Roads, airports, ports, nuclear plants, hydrodams Near future: industrial plants (to some extent) Collaboration with Joint UNEP/OCHA team on environmental risk ISCRAM Summer School 2011

36. Consequence analysis: e.g. earthquakes Where? Circle of 100km Affected people? Sum up pixel values inside affected area Weight with indicators for vulnerability and resilience Damage? Secondary effects? List “critical infrastructure” in affected area Fast alerting is very important for earthquakes ISCRAM Summer School 2011

37. Consequence analysis: e.g. tsunamis When? Together with earthquakes Tsunami propagation model Where? Coastal areas, low elevation, cities near coast Affected people? Sum up pixel values inside affected area: timing ISCRAM Summer School 2011

38. GDACS: timeline Near real-time Event scraping: delay of ~20 min Consequence analysis: max 5 min Alerting (email, fax, SMS): 1500 SMS / 3 min Web site: maps, analysis, Google Earth ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Started upon event and ongoing Model runs (e.g. tsunami wave height model) Media monitoring Map creation / collection Situation and field information sharing Virtual OSOCC portal Virtual OSOCC Alert & CA Information scraping 1h 1day 1week

39. GDACS Media monitoringEuropean Media Monitor Automatic collection of news from over 1000 on-line media sources Fully Multilingual: باكستان تعلن وقفا أحاديا لإطلاق النار في كشمير Query interface: “Show me news with the words ‘earthquake’ and ‘Iran’ from after the earthquake date” GDACS, for each disaster automatically creates a query keeps this updated for 3 weeks ISCRAM Summer School 2011

40. GDACS disaster mappingUNOSAT and JRC Maps from many organisations are catalogued automatically GDACS users can request a new map (UNOSAT service) ISCRAM Summer School 2011

41. GDACS Virtual OSOCCCoordination and information sharing Chat room: “what’s happening?”, “who’s going?” Structured information Teams Team status (monitoring, deployed, mobilising…) UNDAC reports Relief items (in kind, pledges) Content moderation ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Started around 2000 and is now part of GDACS ~12000 professional users Closed site with registration Trusted information Trust in members Routinely used by many LEMA’s and Donor countries GDACS antenna offices in Tunesia, Fiji…

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44. Evaluation of GDACS Overall More effective or efficient process? ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Outcomes Usage statistics Number of partnerships Components Alert component: rate of missed and false alerts

45. Usage Around 15000 users Mostly from international aid organisations Donors / governments OCHA INGOs Red Cross / Red Crescent NGO’s Some from Local emergency management agencies / citizens Media Insurance & commercial companies ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Travel, general interest commercial

46. Usage Users by geographical area ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Middle East Oceania Latin America 1% 3% 2% United Nations European North America 10% Parliament 10% Africa 0% 1% Asia 13% 5% Other 37% Unknown 7% European Europe Commission 32% 16%

47. Alert component Missed events Missed aid $ EQ: 0.02% TC: 50% VO: 0% ISCRAM Summer School 2011

48. Partnerships Early warning and alert USGS, EMSC, WAPMERR, GEOFON… Hawaii University, Pacific Disaster Centre Dartmouth Flood Observatory WFP (HEWSWeb) PTWC Global Volcanism Program SWVRC/IntlVRC IFA/SOLAR Tropical Storm Risk ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Alert communication UMTS (Norway) Information Maps: JRC, UNOSAT Joint UNEP/OCHA PPER: environmental impact reports USGS Shakemaps And many for the Virtual OSOCC…

49. Conclusions For needs-based response, situational and other information is critical, in particular in the first 72h Various information systems can address large parts of the information needs in the early onset of a disaster GDACS was a UN/EU initiative to build such a system and is running successfully Standards based Community based (professionals, including LEMAs) http://www.gdacs.org ISCRAM Summer School 2011

50. Introduction to Natural hazards and disasters Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, tropical cyclones, floods ISCRAM Summer School 2011

51. Existing hazardmonitoring systems Expert meeting on Early Warning Systems, 28 April 2011

52. JRC’s role in GDACS Bridging gaps Expert meeting on Early Warning Systems, 28 April 2011

53. Natural disasters cannot be avoided Over 800 disasters affect near 300 million people yearly and kill hundreds of thousands ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Source: EM-DAT Emergency Disasters Data Base, www.em-dat.net

54. More people are affected by disasters each year But they are not distributed equally Poor countries are affected more ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Source: EM-DAT Emergency Disasters Data Base, www.em-dat.net

55. Earthquakes ISCRAM Summer School 2011

56. Earthquake mechanism Plate tectonics Relative motion of plates ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Terminology Hypocentre and epicentre (on surface) Magnitude: logarithmic measure of energy Intensity: energy on surface at given distance from epicentre

57. Earthquake mechanism Energy propagates P and S waves Attenuation functions Depends on local geology ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Energy shakes buildings Earthquake engineering Vulnerability curves

58. Earthquake occurrence Earthquakes, each year 500 000 detectable 100 000 can be felt 100 cause damage ISCRAM Summer School 2011

59. Earthquake effects Shaking and ground rupture damage to buildings or other rigid structures. Site or local amplification (Mexico City effect): transfer of the seismic motion from hard deep soils to soft superficial soils Landslides and avalanches ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Soil liquefaction water-saturated granular material temporally loses their strength and transforms from a solid to a liquid buildings or bridges tilt or sink into the liquefied deposits Tsunamis Fires break of the electrical power or gas lines

60. Earthquake data Occurrence Near real time (<15 min) Location and magnitude, with uncertainty USGS NEIC (US) EMSC (Europe) GEOFON (Germany) JMA (Japan) … ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Propagation Shakemaps (USGS) ESRC (Russia) Missing datasets Building stock Location, number, type of buildings Localized attenuation functions

61. Tropical cyclones ISCRAM Summer School 2011

62. Tropical cyclone mechanism Mechanism energy released by the condensation of moisture in rising air causes a positive feedback loop over warm ocean waters ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Movement Steering winds; Coriolis effect Horizontal wind speed profile

63. Tropical cyclone occurrence ISCRAM Summer School 2011 1985-2005

64. Tropical cyclone effects High winds people, mobile homes, unsound substandard structures Storm surge Abnormal rise in the water level caused by the wind and pressure forces 90% of death Heavy rain Thunderstorm activity  intense rainfall Rivers and streams flood, roads become blocked, and landslides can occur Tornado activity ISCRAM Summer School 2011

65. Tropical cyclone data World Meteorological Organisation Regional Specialized Meteorological Centres Official advisories severe.worldweather.org/rsmcs.html Compilations at global level Pacific Disaster Center (Hawaii) MetHaz of the University of Central Florida (based on commercial data product) Tropical Storm Risk (http://tropicalstormrisk.com) forecasting the risk modelled wind fields and rainfall. ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Modelling data Wind field equation location central pressure  lacking Storm surge Detailed coastal DEM  lacking Rainfall Available from radar observations (e.g. TRMM)

66. Volcanic eruptions ISCRAM Summer School 2011

67. Volcanic eruptions: mechanism A volcano is an opening in the Earth's surface 12: lava flow 15: ash cloud ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Plate tectonics

68. Types of volcanoes ISCRAM Summer School 2011

69. Volcanic eruptions: occurrence How many active volcanoes known? Erupting now: perhaps 20 Each year: 50-70 Each decade: about 160 Historical eruptions: about 550 Known Holocene eruptions (last 10,000 years): about 1300 Known (and possible) Holocene eruptions: about 1500 ISCRAM Summer School 2011

70. Volcanic eruptions: effects The different types of ("primary") eruptive events are: Pyroclastic explosions Hot ash releases Lava flows Gas emissions Glowing avalanches (gas and ash releases) Secondary events are Melting ice, snow and rain accompanying eruptions are likely to provoke floods and hot mudflows (or lahars); Hot ash releases can start fires. ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Factors of Vulnerability Topographic factors; The proximity of a population to the volcano; Structures with roof not resistant to ashes accumulations; The lack of warning system and evacuation plans

71. Volcanic eruptions: data Global Volcanism Program Smithsonian Institute Weekly bulletins Local volcano observatories Volcano Ash Advisories (VAAC) ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Modelling Local data needed Volcano types Eruption types: http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/vwlessons/kinds/kinds.html

72. Tsunamis ISCRAM Summer School 2011

73. Tsunamis mechanism Tsunamis are giant sea waves that are produced by submarine earthquake or slope collapse into the seabed. Tsunamis can travel thousands of kilometers at 500-800km/h with very little loss of energy. Successive crests can arrive at intervals of every 10 to 45 minutes and wreak destruction for several hours. ISCRAM Summer School 2011

74. Tsunami mechanism ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Uplift of continental crust Length of rupture: increases with higher magnitude Initial height: proportional to length of rupture Shallow water

75. Tsunami wave propagation (SWAN code) ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Swan code by C. Mader used as basis Mass conservation equation Momentum conservation equations Unknowns are H, Ux, Uy The programme solves the equations in explicit form with a fixed time step, which depends on the size assumed for the bathymetry

76. Tsunami occurrence and effect Continental coasts ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Shallow water Slows down wave Amplifies wave height http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/hazard/tsu.shtml

77. Tsunami data Real time UNESCO/IOC Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC, US) JMA (Japan) Relies on seismological data Historical National Geophysical Data Center, NOAA, US ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Modelling Bathymetry Rough: ok Detailed: not Run up: DEM needed

78. Floods ISCRAM Summer School 2011

79. Flood mechanism Principle Hydrology / hydraulics Modelling is data intensive ISCRAM Summer School 2011

80. Flood mechanism Types Flash floods River floods (mostly seasonal) Coastal floods, associated with tropical cyclones, tsunami, storm surges ISCRAM Summer School 2011

81. Flood occurrence Floods cause major human suffering 78% of population affected by disasters 46% of disasters are floods International aid for floods 1/3 of all humanitarian aid 93% of flood deaths in Asia ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Figures from EM-DAT, OCHA, ECHO

82. Flood effects Direct effects: Drowning Injuries during evacuation Indirect effects: Agriculture: loss of crops Destruction of transport and energy infrastructure Contamination by toxic chemicals ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Factors of Vulnerabilities Location of settlements on floodplains Non resistant buildings and foundations Lack of warning system and awareness of flooding hazard Land with little capacity of absorbing rain erosion due to deforestation concrete covering

83. Flood data Real time Hydrographs Met Offices Media Dartmouth Flood Observatory Satellite based… Historical Dartmouth Flood Observatory Disaster databases ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Modelling Detailed DEM Real time weather data

84. Conclusions Mechanisms of natural hazards are well known Occurrence of natural hazards Geographical patterns Random occurrence Data on natural hazards Some data about occurrence and location of disaster is available in near-real time Not all data needed for modelling hazard is available ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Effects of natural hazards on society depend on Hazard Affected area Vulnerabilities Consequence analysis must take these into account Limited by global data availability

85. Consequence analysis Near real time GIS for disaster management ISCRAM Summer School 2011

86. GIS GIS = Geographic information system (or science) Mapping ISCRAM Summer School 2011

87. GIS Handling, storing geospatial data Coordinate in 2D or 3D space  special database techniques Spatial Reference System  projection Imagery  large volumes of data Most (>80%) data has geospatial component Manipulating, querying geospatial data Nearby point, line, polygon “In” area, “intersecting” with line Raster statistics  sum of population in pixels ISCRAM Summer School 2011

88. GIS systems: network enabled Web mapping Web querying Web processing Routing Nearest objects GIS Model ISCRAM Summer School 2011 My system

89. GIS for disaster management Disaster management Typical questions in early onset Where? What is affected? Who is affected? How many people? How do we get there? What response capacity is nearby? Get me a map. Get me a BIG map! I need information for my briefing: SMALL maps! Detailed geospatial information is required Street level base data in Europe; less for Global Application specific data: transport, energy, health, vulnerability ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Generating stations Substations Power lines

90. Global datasets Population Raster, 1km Digital Elevation Raster, 90m Bathymetry Raster, 2 arcmin (~3.6km) Topography Vector, 1km VMAP0, Global Discovery… Roads, railways, rivers, populated places, airports, mountains… Land cover, land use ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Satellite coverage Meteorological Clouds Rainfall, winds… Not available Hospitals, medical infrastructure Energy infrastructure, industrial plants Critical roads, bridges Detailed DEM (for flood, tsunami modelling) Building stock, urban areas

91. Why automating tasks? Disasters happen always at night, in the weekend or on Christmas It is always the same work In early stages all crises have similar requirements Computers can pre-calculate things or make things according to a template And they work faster than humans Automated things have limitations Cannot handle unforeseen cases Can break down over the weekend ISCRAM Summer School 2011

92. Earthquakes Where? Circle where ground motion longer than 1 second Circles with varying radius Affected people? Sum up pixel values inside affected area Weight with indicators for vulnerability and resilience Damage? Secondary effects? List “critical infrastructure” in affected area Fast alerting is very important for earthquakes ISCRAM Summer School 2011

93. Tsunamis When? Together with earthquakes Tsunami propagation model Tsunami wave height model Where? Coastal areas, low elevation Affected people? Sum up pixel values inside affected area, with timing Damage? Secondary effects? List “critical infrastructure” in affected area Animation ISCRAM Summer School 2011

94. Tsunamis ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Play

95. Tsunamis ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Seismic event Event notification EWS detection 1’ Quick analysis and reports (propagation time) Max 30’ First analysis (height and population affected) Max 1h More detailed analysis (run-up calculations) are not of our interest at the moment 0 +30 Time (min)

96. Tropical cyclones Where? Track, including forecast Buffers for Saffir-Simpson categories (wind speed) Affected people? Sum up pixel values inside affected area: past, future Damage? Secondary effects? List “critical infrastructure” in affected area Early warning is possible Animation ISCRAM Summer School 2011

97. Tropical cyclones Impact List critical infrastructure Population ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Risk (probabilities)

98. Volcanoes When? Significant change in eruption status Where? Affected people? Can be pre-calculated Real time ash cloud information Damage? Secondary effects? List “critical infrastructure” in affected area Future Imagery… ISCRAM Summer School 2011

99. Volcanoes Ash plumes ISCRAM Summer School 2011

100. Conclusions GIS can store and manipulate information useful for disaster management GIS is a good basis to implement models to calculate or infer information for disaster management Standards are essential for distributed systems OGC, GLIDE, CAP, RSS ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Real time models depend on Real time input data Accuracy, timeliness Available background data Precision, Fit-for-use Processing time Distributed systems Operational systems Redundancy, resilience

101. System design Operational alerting systems ISCRAM Summer School 2011

102. Automating GIS ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Web site Alerter Queuer Scraper Reporter Models DMA Input Output GIS Analysis

103. In reality more complex ISCRAM Summer School 2011 SMS Server Email Server Fax Server SMS Server Asgard Lite GDACS Tsunami SWAN Servers DMA: Spatial Data Infrastructure Monitor Develop ment

104. Alerting Technology SMS Individual messages (rate 10/sec) Cell broadcast Email Fax RSS, web ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Authority to Authority Reliable Training assumed; content can be difficult Authority to Population Reliable Culture bound Trust, authority, source

105. Operational system Reliable: stable servers, not for development Monitoring When is something down Action plan to recover Redundancy: copy of system and automatic switch ISCRAM Summer School 2011

106. Developing disaster alert and impact systems Conclusions ISCRAM Summer School 2011

107. Conclusions Disaster alert and impact systems are a combination of Hazard science Geophysics Meteorology Modelling GIS models Physical models Mathematical models GIS Spatial data infrastructure Data collection ISCRAM Summer School 2011 Disaster management Requirements analysis Reporting Communication technology Alerting Web systems Operational systems Monitoring and recovery Maintenance

108. Some links http://www.gdacs.org GDACS website http://www.gdacs.org/flooddetection Global Flood Detection System http://dma.jrc.it/map Mapping tool ISCRAM Summer School 2011