Senigallia, 18-19 June 2007 European Workshop ICT and Civil Protection: current state and future scenarios Fausto Marincioni Department of Earth and Environmental

Senigallia, 18-19 June 2007

European WorkshopICT and Civil Protection: current state and future

scenarios

Fausto MarincioniDepartment of Earth and Environmental Science

Long Island University720 Northern Blvd., Brookville, New York, 11548-1300, USA

[email protected]

ICT and Civil Protection Senigallia, 18-19 June 2007

ICT has transformed the ways information is accessed and shared

- Global network

- Interactive

- Real time

ICT is very effective when linked to practical issues of civil protection

The challenge is to bring the proper (needed) ICT to the disaster professional communities


WHAT TYPES OF ICT?

- Communications

- Data storage and mining

- Spatial analysis

- Remote sensing

- Decision support systems

- Virtual reality


Section 214 of the US E-Government Act of 2002, Public Law 107-347, called on the administrator of the Office of Electronic Government (in the Office of Management and Budget), in consultation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to enhance crisis management through advanced information technology


August 24th, 2005

With the Executive Order 12127 of March 31, 1979, President Carter created the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Pulling together programs and personnel scattered throughout the government bureaucracy, FEMA approached the issue of disaster management from the perspective of a comprehensive and integrated disaster management system. As of November 2002, FEMA was an independent federal agency with more than 2600 full time employees distributed among the agency headquarters in Washington D.C. the ten region and area offices across the USA, and the FEMA training center in Emmitsburg, Maryland.


A recent publication of the National Research Council focuses on how information technology is ACTUALLYused in disaster management.

The purpose of this report was to inform federal, state, and local policy makers and public safety and emergency management professionals about future opportunities for the application of ICT to disaster management.


STATUS

US Emergency Management Agencies use ICT extensively.

Nevertheless, ICT has as-yet-unrealized potential to improve how communities handle disasters.

Recent disasters indicated that disaster management organizations have not fully exploited many of today’s technology opportunities.

This situation stands in contrast to the considerable success enjoyed by some sectors such as financial services or transportation in adopting new ICT technologies routinely and aggressively.


SHORT- AND LONG-TERM ACTIONS

As in other sectors, successful use of ICT involves:

• making smarter use of existing technologies

• creating opportunities to develop and adopt new technologies

• develop organizational practices to best employ these technologies


Short-term opportunities to use already available ICT

Adjusting policies and procedures for the application of existing technologies would yield significant short-term enhancement of disaster management.

For example, ad hoc use of wireless capabilities in laptops carried by some first responders, peer-to-peer use of Land Mobile Radio System (LMRS) radios, and use of Family Radio Service/General Mobile Radio Service (walkie-talkies), all can help to provide communications even when the communications infrastructure is damaged.

Such technology options may already be in the hands of users,but may not be deployed in disasters because policies and procedures for their use are not in place.


Short-term opportunities to use already available ICT

Other examples of easy deeds include:

Use of editable Web sites (wikis), blogs, and data-mining tools to capture, analyze, and share lessons learned from operational field experiences;

Use of database, Web, and call center technologies to establish a service to provide information about available equipment, materiel, personnel, volunteer organizations, etc.

Use of planning, scheduling, task allocation, and resource management tools to help in formulating emergency plans, tracking their execution and to ensure timely recognition of problems and associated follow-up decisions.


Long term ICT research and development

Some of the IT-enabled capabilities necessary for disaster management address very specialized problems that do not have a large commercial market.

ICT systems are designed to ensure day-to-day efficiency rather than the resilience and scalability that disasters demand.

Nevertheless, commercial ICT provide many of the building blocks needed to realize these capabilities.


Long term ICT research and development

Multidisciplinary research in pursuit of six key IT-enabled capabilities:

• More robust, interoperable, and priority-sensitive

communic.

• Better situational awareness and a common operating

picture

• Improved decision support and resource

tracking/allocation

• Greater organizational agility for disaster

management

• Better engagement of the public

• Enhanced infrastructure survivability and continuity of societal functions

More robust, interoperable, and priority-sensitive communications

Communication networks that are more resilient to disruption than today’s commercial networks, that can:

- last longer without utility power

- expand capacity to meet emergency needs

- autonomously reconfigure themselves

- handle the range of communication needs and changing environmental conditions that arise in disasters

- distinguish between and properly prioritize communications


Better situational awareness and common operating picture

Situational awareness is the ability for actors in a disaster, from national coordinators to emergency responders or the general public, to get information about an incident, and to understand what that information means in the context of the evolving situation.

The common operating picture is a shared understanding of a situation by a group of people who need to act together to achieve common goals.

The aim is to improve a person’s ability to do his or her job more effectively.


Improved decision support and resource tracking/allocation

Assist decision makers in:

- formulating prospective actions

- helping them understand and assess characteristics and consequences of alternative courses of action

- follow-up on decisions

- closing the feedback loop from decision to result


Greater organizational agility for disaster management

The use of ICT has enabled and driven changes to organizational structures and processes (e.g., more distributed decision making).

Agility is at a premium in disasters because no one type of organization or group of organizations is always best suited for the variety of problems that arise.

Related issues with significant ICT implications include building links among professionals who do not share a history of cooperation and more quickly integrating the operations of multiple organizations.


Better engagement of the public (1) Supplying information to the public(2) Making better use of information supplied by the public

Although ICT is used today to alert and inform the public before, during, and after a disaster, information and communications modalities must be better tailored to the needs of particular populations and ethnic groups.

More attention should be paid to the information and resources held by the public because members of the public collectively have a richer view of a disaster situation

At issue is how to engage the entire population, given the existence of groups with cultural and language differences and other special needs.


Community Emergency Response Team

Enhanced infrastructure survivability and continuity of societal functionsLarge disasters impact physical infrastructures, such as the electric grid, transportation, and health care, as well as ICT systems.

ICT infrastructures need to be more resilient.

ICT can improve the survivability and speed the recovery of other infrastructure by providing better information about the status of systems and advance warning of impending failures.

ICT can facilitate the continuity of disrupted societal functions by providing new tools for reconnecting families, friends, organizations, and communities.


Finem RespiceLook to the end [before setting forth]



Obviously, ICT is not a panacea for all disaster communication issues.

Problematic aspects do exist from both the technical and the organizational sides.

For example, the need for significant changes in users' behaviour with certain technologies is a limitation. (technological systems should be expected to adapt to users' behaviour, not the opposite). Similarly, the lack of common semantics among systems is a huge inhibitor.

Yet, the most communications interoperability problems are not technical, and that better human organization and willingness to cooperate are critical factors in making better use of ICT for disaster management.


The degree of application of ITC does not appear to be rooted in the intrinsic advantages of the technology itself, but in the perceived ones.

ICT can enhance disaster management

if attuned to the diverse professional culture and context

of the local disaster management community.


Thank you for your attention!

Documents

Senigallia, 18-19 June 2007 European Workshop ICT and Civil Protection: current state and future scenarios Fausto Marincioni Department of Earth and Environmental