Assessing vulnerability and modelling assistance: using demographic indicators of vulnerability and agent-based modelling to explore emergency flooding relief response

Flooding is a significant concern for much of the UK and is recognised as a primary threat by most local councils. Those in society most often deemed vulnerable: the elderly, poor or sick, for example, often see their level of vulnerability increase during hazard events. A greater knowledge of the spatial distribution of vulnerability within communities is key to understanding how a population may be impacted by a hazard event. Vulnerability indices are regularly used – in conjunction with needs assessments and on-the-ground research – to target service provision and justify resource allocation. Past work on measuring and mapping vulnerability has been limited by a focus on income-related indicators, a lack of consideration of accessibility, and the reliance on proprietary data. The Open Source Vulnerability Index (OSVI) encompasses an extensive range of vulnerability indicators supported by the wider literature and expert validation and provides data at a sufficiently fine resolution that can identify vulnerable populations. Findings of the OSVI demonstrate the potential cascading impact of a flood hazard as it impacts an already vulnerable population: exacerbating pre-existing vulnerabilities, limiting capabilities and restricting accessibility and access to key services. The OSVI feeds into an agent-based model (ABM) that explores the capacity of the British Red Cross (BRC) to distribute relief during flood emergencies using strategies based upon the OSVI. A participatory modelling approach was utilised whereby the BRC were included in all aspects of the model development. The major contribution of this work is the novel synthesis of demographics analysis, vulnerability mapping and geospatial simulation. The project contributes to the growing understanding of vulnerability and response management within the NGO sector. It is hoped that the index and model produced will allow responder organisations to run simulations of similar emergency events and adjust strategic response plans accordingly

ICT and the Environment in Developing Countries: an Overview of Opportunities and Developments

Both developed and developing countries face many environmental challenges, including climate change, improving energy efficiency and waste management, addressing air pollution, water quality and scarcity, and loss of natural habitats and biodiversity. Drawing on the existing literature, this paper presents an overview of how the Internet and the ICT and related research communities can help tackle environmental challenges in developing countries. The review focuses on the role of ICTs in climate change mitigation, mitigating other environmental pressures, and climate change adaptation.information and communication technology (ICT), environment, climate change, mitigation, adaptation.

Web-based public participation GIS application : a case study on flood emergency management

Scientific summary The increasing prevalence of natural disasters is driving people to pay more and more attention to emergency management. Progress in catastrophe analysis capabilities based on Geographical Information System (GIS) may allow the needs of public participation to be considered. Synchronous data sharing between citizens and emergency workers could effectively promote the process of decision making. This thesis introduces an interactive web-based application which mainly deals with flood risk management in Kamloops in Canada. The application is built for citizens and emergency workers using three layers: (1) the client side is developed in HTML and JavaScript; (2) the web server layer, which connects the users and the database, is implemented in PHP; and (3) the database contains PostgreSQL, GeoServer and OSM. Except the city map, PostgreSQL stores the spatial information with the support of OpenGIS. Generally, the application meets the initial objectives. Citizens can access present shelter information and register their own requirements for shelter, while emergency workers have the power to manage all the shelters and warehouses based on the available flood information and figure out the supply allocation solution based on the response from the public. On the other hand, the application also provides useful routing functions for both citizens and emergency workers, such as searching the available shortest path to a shelter, and computing the optimized allocation routes between all the shelters and warehouses. This practical study proved that Public Participation GIS (PPGIS), combined with IT knowledge, can provide very useful tools for decision making when facing a flood risk.Popularized summary Nowadays, the growing prevalence of natural disasters is driving people to pay more and more attention to emergency management. Progress in catastrophe analysis capabilities based on Geographical Information System (GIS) may allow the needs of public participation to be considered. Synchronous data sharing between citizens and emergency workers could effectively promote the process of decision making. This thesis introduces an interactive web-based application which mainly deals with flood risk management in Kamloops in Canada. The application contains various data sources and adopts spatial database. Citizens can access present shelter information and register their own requirements for shelter, while emergency workers have the power to manage all the shelters and warehouses based on the available flood information and figure out the supply allocation solution based on the response from the public. On the other hand, the application also provides useful routing functions for both citizens and emergency workers, such as searching the available shortest path to a shelter, and computing the optimized allocation routes between all the shelters and warehouses. This practical study proved that Public Participation GIS (PPGIS), combined with IT knowledge, can provide very useful tools for decision making when facing a flood risk

Minimising flood risk accumulation through effective private and public sector engagement

Flooding is a global problem affecting both developing and developed countries. Academics and practitioners in climate science frequently argue that changing climatic conditions are likely to worsen the length and severity of these flood events, which will have catastrophic consequences to economies and social lives of communities world over. Whilst the overall consequences affecting many regions have been established, effective and efficient strategies to cope with the effects of flooding and building up resilience strategies have not properly evolved. This paper examines this issue by exploring effective strategies undertaken in partnerships between private and public stakeholders. The paper details two case studies conducted in a developed and a developing country to investigate what global strategies for coping and resilience to flooding have worked in practice. The two case studies: Cockermouth in Cumbria, UK and Patuakhali in Bangladesh provide interesting insights on how some of the strategies work within the chosen developed and developing country contexts. The case study findings are mapped against UNISDR’s ten-point checklist under the “Making Cities Resilient Campaign”. In conclusion the paper examines how these findings can be incorporated within city development plans to develop stakeholder capacity and capability and eventually build up resilient cities

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in Humanitarian Assistance: A Meta-Analysis

Every year natural and man-made disasters cause mass population displacement, loss of lives, and human suffering. On a given disaster several international or non-profit organizations will respond depending on the region in need as well as media and donor attention Olsen, Gorm Rye, et al (2003). Because of the extreme unique difficulties found in each disaster zone such as infrastructural damages, uncertain demand and supply, geographical challenges and time pressures, it is imperative that humanitarian organizations have readily available and applicable response methodologies as well as information technologies to increase their relief impact. In regards to the latter Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has proven to be an indispensable tool in the humanitarian sector. However, despite there being great recognition in regards to the importance of geospatial information in relief operations there is still a knowledge gap in regards to all the different tasks and uses of GIS in the humanitarian sector. For example, Espindola et al (2016) lament that despite the recent increase in literature which utilizes GIS for humanitarian logistics most of the research is limited to net-work analysis and also that GIS’s full potential for disaster relief has not been fully tapped. This meta-analysis, for the first time, seeks to address such gap of knowledge by achieving two main goals: (1) To better understand the various ways in which Geographic Information System (GIS) can be applied in humanitarian settings by revealing how the academic community is utilizing such technology in their research, and (2) to point out strengths and areas that have been overlooked as well as help guide future research in this field

From Space to Ground Zero: The Application of Geographic Information Systems and Rocket Cargo Transportation to Disaster Management Operations

This paper provides an overview of the application of space-based technologies, specifically Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology and rocket cargo launches, to disaster management operations. GIS links data from satellites, remote sensing, and other sources to dashboards, allowing relief teams to monitor relevant demographic, environmental, and disaster details. This information supports multiple aspects of planning and decision-making in the preparedness, response, and relief stages of the disaster management cycle. Rocket cargo transportation, an emerging method of shipping supplies, will allow for supplies to be shipped anywhere in the world in under twenty-four hours. This can be used in a future disaster relief scenario through the delivery of supplies in a timely manner. Both GIS and rocket cargo transportation are applied to a hypothetical flooding scenario, demonstrating how these technologies are and would be applied to three of the four disaster management cycle phases

Minimising flood risk accumulation through effective private and public sector engagement

Flooding is a global problem affecting both developing and developed countries. Academics and practitioners in climate science frequently argue that changing climatic conditions are likely to worsen the length and severity of these flood events, which will have catastrophic consequences to economies and social lives of communities world over. Whilst the overall consequences affecting many regions have been established, effective and efficient strategies to cope with the effects of flooding and building up resilience strategies have not properly evolved. This paper examines this issue by exploring effective strategies undertaken in partnerships between private and public stakeholders. The paper details two case studies conducted in a developed and a developing country to investigate what global strategies for coping and resilience to flooding have worked in practice. The two case studies: Cockermouth in Cumbria, UK and Patuakhali in Bangladesh provide interesting insights on how some of the strategies work within the chosen developed and developing country contexts. The case study findings are mapped against UNISDR’s ten-point checklist under the “Making Cities Resilient Campaign”. In conclusion the paper examines how these findings can be incorporated within city development plans to develop stakeholder capacity and capability and eventually build up resilient cities

The Role of Transportation in Campus Emergency Planning, MTI Report 08-06

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina created the greatest natural disaster in American history. The states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama sustained significant damage, including 31 colleges and universities. Other institutions of higher education, most notably Louisiana State University (LSU), became resources to the disaster area. This is just one of the many examples of disaster impacts on institutions of higher education. The Federal Department of Homeland Security, under Homeland Security Presidential Directive–5, requires all public agencies that want to receive federal preparedness assistance to comply with the National Incident Management System (NIMS), which includes the creation of an Emergency Operations Plan (EOP). Universities, which may be victims or resources during disasters, must write NIMS–compliant emergency plans. While most university emergency plans address public safety and logistics management, few adequately address the transportation aspects of disaster response and recovery. This MTI report describes the value of integrating transportation infrastructure into the campus emergency plan, including planning for helicopter operations. It offers a list of materials that can be used to educate and inform campus leadership on campus emergency impacts, including books about the Katrina response by LSU and Tulane Hospital, contained in the report´s bibliography. It provides a complete set of Emergency Operations Plan checklists and organization charts updated to acknowledge lessons learned from Katrina, 9/11 and other wide–scale emergencies. Campus emergency planners can quickly update their existing emergency management documents by integrating selected annexes and elements, or create new NIMS–compliant plans by adapting the complete set of annexes to their university´s structures