Mobile Decision Support in Emergency Situations, Ketil Stølen, Sintef IKT

Technology for a better society

VERDIKT conference 15‐16.10 2013

1

Ketil Stølen

Mobile Decision Support in Emergency Situations


• Main hypothesis and objective• Partners• Two focus areas• Systematic literature review• Support for dynamic risk analysis in emergency situations• Follow‐up of project results• Conclusions

2

Issues to be addressed


• Main Hypothesis: Careful integration of state of the art technologies and principles for risk modeling, user interface design and hand held tools will significantly improve the decision making process of emergency situation operational leaders.

• Main Objective: Investigate this hypothesis through the development of mobile decision support solutions for emergency situations based on pre‐emergency knowledge resulting from risk analysis.

3

Hypothesis and objective

Technology for a better society 4

Partners

• Lead and contractual partner: Locus AS

• End‐user representatives– Norwegian Red Cross – The Directorate for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning (DSB) – The Police

• Leading suppliers on technologies, tools and solutions of relevance • Geodata AS • Locus AS

• Research‐performing partner– SINTEF ICT


• Establish critical information and scenario‐based decision support prior to the emergency situation• what type of information?• which risks?

5

Focus area I:


• Develop solutions for efficient on‐site access to information and decision support

6

Focus area II:


• Need for fast and reliable action• Information from multiple sources• Multiple agents• Uncertainty

7

Characteristics of emergency operations


Example: Explosion at a chemical plant

• Risk of further damage?• Population registry

– Densely populated? – Evacuation?

• Meteorological data, such as wind direction and speed

– Toxic chemicals?

• Public transport• Railway/subway tunnels nearby?• Local authorities• Where are the sewers? • Leakage into the water supply?

8


Example: Avalanche

• Limited time– 18 minutes is the limit

• Many uncertainties• Risk analysis

– Safe for rescue personnel?– New avalanche?

• Multiple roles– Police (overall responsibility)– Operational leader in the field– Local command

9


Systematic literature review

• Investigations of large potential and actual incidents in Norway – between 1999 and 2008.

• The purpose was to identify factors that – affect the risk level during emergency response.

10


Selected incidents for literature review

A large incident: – five or more deaths or irreversible disabilities;– damage to property or equipment for more than 30 million NOK;– irreversible environmental damage

Based on this we ended up with 5 incidents.1. MS Sleipners shipwreck, 1999. 2. Åsta train accident, 2000. 3. Lillestrøm train fire, 2000. 4. Landslide in Ålesund, 2008.5. Wildfire Froland, 2008.

11


Main findings of literature review

• The most important factors were – lacking acknowledgement of risks due to lack of knowledge, or – lacking assessment of risks, causing inadequate counter measures.

• The most critical mistakes were made during the early stages – before the external expertise arrives on the scene.

12


To address risk in emergency situations we need

1. Support for establishing critical information and scenario‐based decision support prior to emergency situations

2. Support for analysing risks and supporting decision making during emergency operations, especially during the initial phase


Support for dynamic risk analysis in emergency situations

• Purpose: Identify information needs

• When: Prior • Target group: Risk analysts of

municipalities

• Purpose: Support robust decision making

• When: During• Target group: Operational

command

Step I: Pre‐emergency risk analysis Step II: Real‐time decision support=>


Step I: Pre‐emergency risk analysis and information gatheringSub‐steps:

1. Develop incident scenarios2. Identify critical information needed to estimate likelihood and consequence3. Collect required information in terms of geographical data and store in GIS server4. Define functions for calculating consequence and likelihood based on information5. Define functions for calculating risks based on consequence and likelihood6. Enable access to stored data and dynamic data

15


Example: explosion at chemical plant

Threat Threat scenario Asset


Example: explosion at chemical plant

[Likelihood]

Chemicals spread through subway system

[Likelihood]

Toxical chemicals dispersed over 50000 km2

[Likelihood]

Chemicals leaks into water supply

[Likelihood]

Toxical chemicals released into atmosphere

Explosion at chemical plant

major

moderate

major

s5: Population registryd5: Number of peoplea5:

s1: yr.nod1: wind directiona1:

s2: yr.nod2: wind speeda2:

s3: Public transportd3: Subway mapa3:

s4: Local authorititesd4: Map of sewage a4:

people

s = sourced = dataa = analysis

Strong wind

proximity to subway

access to sewers

Critical error


Step II: Real time decision‐support of dynamic events• Visualise results of pre‐emergency risk analysis to support decisions• Simulate future scenarios by changing risk parameters• Dynamic updates based on real‐time information• Support robust decision making based on multiple criteria in dynamic environments


How did it end?

• It has not ended!

• We continue within the frame of the Bridge project funded by EU's security programme

– http://www.bridgeproject.eu/en

19

BRIDGE Project Review, Stavanger (Norway), September 25th - 26th 2013

BRIDGE System of Systems

20

Command & Control

Emergency ResponseTeams

Public

Experts Victims

Logistics

Training

Incident Site

Advanced Situation Awareness• Risk assessment by command centre• Model the effect of explosives• Model the dispersion of plume• Unmanned Areal Vehicle• Live Video from incident site• Live environmental atmospheric data


• Two focus areas:• establish critical information and scenario‐based decision support• solutions for efficient on‐site access to information and decision support

• The project has conducted empirical studies, developed methodologies and various prototype tools that has been tried out in practice in various settings; e.g. training exercises

• The development of several EMERGENCY artefacts are continued within the EU‐project BRIDGE• NRK Rogaland: http://tv.nrk.no/serie/distriktsnyheter‐

rogaland/dkro99092513/25‐09‐2013

21

Conclusions


http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~ketils/emergency/the‐emergency‐dissemination.htm

22

EMERGENCY publications and reports in pdf