Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio

Identifying challenges in Disaster Risk Reduction: Risk Data Hub for Disaster Risk Management

The Workshop on “Identifying challenges in Disaster Risk Reduction” held in Varese, Italy on 28 -29 of June 2017 aimed to improve the knowledge base on Disaster Risk Assessment (DRA) that could contribute to the potential development of the updated version of EU Guidelines for Risk Assessment and Mapping for Disaster Management. The DRMKC Risk Data Hub will become the tool for centralized collection of available knowledge, which will facilitate the identification of gaps. Challenges common to a large number of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) initiatives were identified and discussed. Challenging at local, national and international levels for top down strategies and bottom up actions for DRR is to underline the scope, importance and applicability of different methodologies, data usage and actions for different scales. With this workshop, the DRMKC planned to identify main challenges for DRR focusing the attention on two hazards: floods and drought. To accomplish its objectives, the workshop brought together: experts of flood and drought disaster risk, member states experts with experience in disaster risk assessment at national level and national Web platform developers experienced in disaster risk mapping.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Disaster management in smart cities

The smart city concept, in which data from different systems are available, contains a multitude of critical infrastructures. This data availability opens new research opportunities in the study of the interdependency between those critical infrastructures and cascading effects solutions and focuses on the smart city as a network of critical infrastructures. This paper proposes an integrated resilience system linking interconnected critical infrastructures in a smart city to improve disaster resilience. A data-driven approach is considered, using artificial intelligence and methods to minimize cascading effects and the destruction of failing critical infrastructures and their components (at a city level). The proposed approach allows rapid recovery of infrastructures’ service performance levels after disasters while keeping the coverage of the assessment of risks, prevention, detection, response, and mitigation of consequences. The proposed approach has the originality and the practical implication of providing a decision support system that handles the infrastructures that will support the city disaster management system—make the city prepare, adapt, absorb, respond, and recover from disasters by taking advantage of the interconnections between its various critical infrastructures to increase the overall resilience capacity. The city of Lisbon (Portugal) is used as a case to show the practical application of the approach.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A study of the relationship between governmental and non-governmental disaster prevention

Generally, in order to improve a regional safety for disasters and accidents, indispensable strategies are not only a reinforcement of the governmental ability, but also a strengthening of the cooperative relationship between government and non-government which means volunteers, residents and so on. Needless to say, the effective strategy should be varied depending on the actual situation in the subject area, because there is no guarantee that some strategies or countermeasures based on the common-sense values of one subject area will be of universal application for all other regions. Especially, such an effective strategy will also differ according to whether the subject area is in the developed country or in the developing country. Consequently, the process to make clear about what the fundamental problems are in the subject area must be an essential for examination of such solutions as above. If I tried to overview the actual situation of various places about firefighting as an example, then I can find some distinctive tendencies. If I overviewed the recent Japanese situation for firefighting as an example, it may be said that there is a highly-developed fire fighting system which can extinguish a fire immediately except for a large number of simultaneous fires in a huge earthquake. It may be said that there is an effect of a smooth cooperative relationship between governmental and non-governmental fire fighting. In the Japanese system, it is worth specially mentioning that the voluntary fire fighting plays a part in the official fire fighting on a legal basis. On the other hand, it is unusual for most developing countries to have such a highly-developed fire fighting system. It ought to be important for such most developing countries to make full use of the existing community resources, because it is impossible to reinforce immediately the governmental infrastructures. Needless to say, even if in Japan, it is not that there are not problems at all. It has been long since some researchers said a weakness of a community leads to an undesirable situation not only in fire protection, but also in every respect. Regarding to the disaster prevention or regional fire fighting validity, it has been pointed out that a resident who depends overly on an existing highly-developed disaster prevention system tends to lack a consciousness of the parties concerned. It is true that the Basic Act on Disaster Control Measures which was triggered by “Isewan Typhoon” had promoted the remarkable infrastructure improvements for disaster prevention, and also had succeeded in decreasing the number of victims per year by natural disasters from several thousands to about hundreds. Therefore, it can be also said that the subject of the current Japanese disaster prevention issue is expanding to a reinvigoration of a community such as how to revitalize a consciousness of the parties concerned, after establishment of the Basic Act on Disaster Control Measures in Japan. It follows from what has been said thus far that the process to make clear about what the fundamental problems are in the subject area must be an essential for each place, and that the effective countermeasure ought to be varied depending on the actual situation of the subject area. Especially, I may say that the differences in disaster prevention issues between the developing countries and the developed countries ought to become clear by focusing on the relationship between government and non-government. As mentioned-above, in this study, focusing on a fire fighting as an examination case, I would consider the differences on the fundamental problems and effective countermeasure for regional fire fighting validity between developing countries and developed countries. I would take the case of Thailand as a developing country, and also take the case of Japan as a developed country. In summary, the following results were obtained: Firstly, regarding to the investigation on Bangkok, Thailand, as a case study of a developing country, the following were grasped by some investigations. Namely, even though there are some voluntary firefighting groups in each district in addition to the governmental fire fighting, so far from existing a cooperative relationship, there are many conflicts between them. And such conflicts hinder the improvement of the efficiency of the comprehensive regional fire fighting. There is no doubt about the necessity of the further infrastructure improvements for disaster prevention. However it is also true that such further infrastructure improvements take a long time and a lot of cost. Therefore, it was considered that the most practical countermeasure would be an improvement of the efficiency of the regional fire fighting by an establishment of the cooperative relationship between the governmental and volunteer fire fighters which was a typical case of the existing community resources. In order to put this countermeasure into practice, in this study, I have proposed the Regional Fire Fighting Validity Map which can show the actual situation and the effect of the establishment of the cooperative relationship between them, and also held several workshops in which both members were attended. As a result, this practical approach succeeded in achievement the above purpose. I heard that nobody succeeded in establishment of such a cooperative relationship between them in the past. Therefore, this ought to be the first case in Thailand history. Moreover, the spread of this strategy to the other districts is expected in the future. Secondly, regarding to the investigation in Japan, as a case study of a developed country, the following were grasped by some investigations. It has been long since some researchers emphasized the importance of a reinvigoration of a community for the further improvement of the regional fire fighting validity, and these researchers also emphasized only the importance of the altruistic or charitable behavior for an achievement of the reinvigoration of a community. In contrast, it was found from the results in this study that a person who had understood deeply the existence of the fire risk which spread from its neighborhood, had a basic tendency to have a motivation to awaken a neighbor’s activity for a regional fire spread risk reduction. Especially, it is quite interesting that such a basic tendency can be explained as not only an altruistic motive but also a selfish motive. Furthermore, I made some contents in order to promote such a motivation, and verified its usefulness. In this sense, practical use of this strategy is expected in the future.学位記番号：工博甲444, 学位の種類：博士（工学

Reflecting Disaster Risk in Development Indicators

Disasters triggered by hazards, such as floods, earthquakes, droughts, and cyclones, pose significant impediments to sustainable development efforts in the most vulnerable and exposed countries. Mainstreaming disaster risk is hence seen as an important global agenda as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) 2015-2030. Yet, conventional development indicators remain largely negligent of the potential setbacks that may be posed by disaster risk. This article discusses the need to reflect disaster risk in development indicators and proposes a concept disaster risk-adjusted human development index (RHDI) as an example. Globally available national-level datasets of disaster risk to public and private assets (including health, educational facilities, and private housing) is combined with an estimate of expenditure on health, education, and capital formation to construct an RHDI. The RHDI is then analyzed across various regions and HDI groups, and contrasted with other HDI variants including inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI) and the gender-specific female HDI (FHDI) to identify groups of countries where transformational disaster risk reduction (DRR) approaches may be necessary

Building a Natural Hazard Insurance System (NHIS): The Long-Lasting Italian Case

none3The worrying growth of extreme natural events and their socioeconomic impact over time is increasingly fuelling the debate on how to manage disasters in view of developing resilient and sustainable societies. One possible financial tool may be represented by insurance against natural hazards, such as earthquakes, floods, and landslides. From this perspective, the current article considers legislative attempts to build a Natural Hazard Insurance System (NHIS) in Italy. The (never promulgated) bills proposed over a time span of about 30 years were analysed by: (a) A text-mining technique, considering the extraction of relevant data for the research; (b) the careful reading of the texts and their cross-correlated critical analysis. Approximately forty bills have been proposed since the 1980s and they mainly concern the proposal of an NHIS based on a certain degree of compulsoriness (the voluntary system is contemplated only on a subordinate basis). Two possible main hurdles to the promulgation of such laws were inferred: the insurance scheme to be adopted and the issue of illegal buildings. Furthermore, the item of natural hazard risk perception was a factor not adequately considered by the bills. Based on the critical scrutiny of the bills and taking advantage of international experiences, the establishment of a voluntary national scheme managed by a public authority with specific competences on NHIS is proposed.openGizzi, Fabrizio; Porrini, Donatella; De Masi, FrancescoGizzi, Fabrizio; Porrini, Donatella; De Masi, Francesc

Emergency Telecommunications for Managing Disasters: A Complexity Science Perspective

Telecommunications technologies have shown great potential for humanitarian relief on a global scale. The complexity of the disaster scenario makes necessary to develop new strategies in order to respond efficiently and in a timely manner to humanitarian needs when disasters occur. Given the rapid technological advances and their associated convergence, we argue that the elements (subsystems) of a telecommunications system cannot be seen in an isolated manner, neither be conceptualized only as infrastructure; an interdisciplinary perspective is required. We suggest that a fragmented approach to telecommunications systems limits their application and effectiveness in disaster relief and recovery. In our approach, we consider the emergency telecommunications ecosystem as a socio-technical system. The understanding of the interactions of the main agents of such ecosystem is key to respond to disasters in a coordinated and orchestrated manner. Telecommunications technologies are important enablers, but should not be considered the center of the planning and execution stages of the disaster management process

Geodesign the multi-layered water safety

This paper aims to frame the multi-layered water safety concept in the context of a systematic, thorough, multidisciplinary and collaborative methodology for complex problems solving, i.e. geodesign. Multi-layered safety is an integrated flood risk management (FRM) concept based not only on flood probability reduction through prevention (layer 1), but also on consequences’ minimization in the case of a flood through spatial solutions (layer 2) and crisis management (layer 3). It has been introduced in the Netherlands in 2009 following the European Flood Risk Directive adopted in 2007. In this study, the multi-layered safety is qualitatively assessed, demonstrating that it rather resembles a parallel system, and that collaboration is required to decide about the most desirable safety measures, which should not only be based on their economic efficiency but also on their social acceptability. In the light of these factors, we attempt to methodologically systematize the multi-layered safety concept by following the geodesign framework. The latter means that, through its implementation, understanding of the current situation of a particular area of interest, which in turn it may support, the allocation of weights regarding the three layers of the multi-tier safety concept is facilitated. Furthermore, the geodesign of the multi-layered safety shows that participation and interaction of the safety policy makers, as well as iterations for achieving maximum consensus between them concerning the more balanced safety measures, taking into account their economic efficiency, their impact on the environment, the local circumstances and the values of the people at place, are methodologically enabled

The Acceptance of Using Information Technology for Disaster Risk Management: A Systematic Review

The numbers of natural disaster events are continuously affecting human and the world economics. For coping with disaster, several sectors try to develop the frameworks, systems, technologies and so on. However, there are little researches focusing on the usage behavior of Information Technology (IT) for disaster risk management (DRM). Therefore, this study investigates the affecting factors on the intention to use IT for mitigating disaster’s impacts. This study conducted a systematic review with the academic researches during 2011-2018. Two important factors from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and others are used in describing individual behavior. In order to investigate the potential factors, the technology platforms are divided into nine types. According to the findings, computer software such as GIS applications are frequently used for simulation and spatial data analysis. Social media is preferred among the first choices during disaster events in order to communicate about situations and damages. Finally, we found five major potential factors which are Perceived Usefulness (PU), Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU), information accessibility, social influence, and disaster knowledge. Among them, the most essential one of using IT for disaster management is PU, while PEOU and information accessibility are more important in the web platforms