Information Sharing and Coordination in Collaborative Flood Warning and Response Systems

The introduction of new information and communication technologies enables communities to share information and self-organize in the response to disasters. Crowd-sourcing approaches enable professional authorities to capture information from the ground in real-time. However, there is a gap between the professional and community-driven response: locally emergent initiatives may lack the overview needed for efficient coordination, while decisions taken by professionals may not consider the actual situation on the ground. We study this information sharing and coordination gap through the lens of urban flood early warning and response systems. Based on a literature review combining academic articles as well as guidelines and reports from practice, we derive design principles for these systems. Considering the case study of Accra, specific requirements are individuated. The design principles are then used to address the requirements, resulting in a set of functionalities for a collaborative flood warning and response system. These functionalities provide the basis for further development and evaluation

Resource Planning in Disaster Response - Decision Support Models and Methodologies

Managing the response to natural, man-made, and technical disasters is becoming increasingly important in the light of climate change, globalization, urbanization, and growing conflicts. Sudden onset disasters are typically characterized by high stakes, time pressure, and uncertain, conflicting or lacking information. Since the planning and management of response is a complex task, decision makers of aid organizations can thus benefit from decision support methods and tools. A key task is the joint allocation of rescue units and the scheduling of incidents under different conditions of collaboration. The authors present an approach to support decision makers who coordinate response units by (a) suggesting mathematical formulations of decision models, (b) providing heuristic solution procedures, and (c) evaluating the heuristics against both current best practice behavior and optimal solutions. The computational experiments show that, for the generated problem instances, (1) current best practice behavior can be improved substantially by our heuristics, (2) the gap between heuristic and optimal solutions is very narrow for instances without collaboration, and (3) the described heuristics are capable of providing solutions for all generated instances in less than a second on a state-of-the-art PC

Supporting group decision makers to locate temporary relief distribution centres after sudden-onset disasters: A case study of the 2015 Nepal earthquake

International audienceIn the humanitarian response, multiple decision-makers (DMs) need to collaborate in various problems, such as locating temporary relief distribution centres (RDCs). Several studies have argued that maximising demand coverage, reducing logistics costs and minimising response time are among the critical objectives when locating RDCs after a sudden-onset disaster. However, these objectives are often conflicting and the trade-offs can considerably complicate the situation for finding a consensus.To address the challenge and support the DMs, we suggest investigating the stability of non-dominated alternatives derived from a multi-objective model based on Monte Carlo Simulations. Our approach supports determining what trade-offs actually matter to facilitate discussions in the presence of multiple stakeholders. To validate our proposal, we extend a location-allocation model and apply our approach to an actual data-set from the 2015 Nepal earthquake response. Our analyses show that with the relative importance of covering demands, the trade-offs between logistics costs and response time affects the numbers and locations of RDCs considerably. We show through a small experiment that the outputs of our approach can effectively support group decision-making to develop relief plans in disasters response

Weaving Equity into Infrastructure Resilience Research and Practice: A Decadal Review and Future Directions

After about a decade of research in this domain, what is missing is a systematic overview of the research agenda across different infrastructures and hazards. It is now imperative to evaluate the current progress and gaps. This paper presents a systematic review of equity literature on disrupted infrastructure during a natural hazard event. Following a systematic review protocol, we collected, screened, and evaluated almost 3,000 studies. Our analysis focuses on the intersection within the dimensions of the eight-dimensional assessment framework that distinguishes focus of the study, methodological approaches, and equity dimensions (distributional-demographic, distributional-spatial, procedural, and capacity equity). To conceptualize the intersection of the different dimensions of equity, we refer to pathways, which identify how equity is constructed, analyzed, and used. Significant findings show that (1) the interest in equity in infrastructure resilience has exponentially increased, (2) the majority of studies are in the US and by extension in the global north, (3) most data collection use descriptive and open-data and none of the international studies use location-intelligence data. The most prominent equity conceptualization is distributional equity, such as the disproportionate impacts to vulnerable populations and spaces. The most common pathways to study equity connect distributional equity to the infrastructure's power, water, and transportation in response to flooding and hurricane storms. Other equity concepts or pathways, such as connections of equity to decision-making and building household capacity, remain understudied. Future research directions include quantifying the social costs of infrastructure disruptions and better integration of equity into resilience decision-making.Comment: 37 pages, 11 figures, 2 table

Hurricane Harvey Report:A Fact-Finding Effort in the Direct Aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in the Greater Houston Region

On August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Rockport, Texas as a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of approximately 200 km/hour. Harvey caused severe damages in coastal Texas due to extreme winds and storm surge, but will go down in history for record-setting rainfall totals and flood-related damages. Across large portions of southeast Texas, rainfall totals during the six-day period between August 25 and 31, 2017 were amongst the highest ever recorded, causing flooding at an unprecedented scale. More than 100,000 residential properties are estimated to have been affected in southeast Texas. It is likely that Harvey will rank among the costliest storms in U.S. history. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Delft University of Technology has initiated a Harvey Research Team to undertake a coordinated multidisciplinary investigation of the events with a focus on the greater Houston area. This ‘fact-finding’ research is based on information available from public sources during and in the first weeks after the event. Results are therefore preliminary, but aim to provide insight into lessons that can be learned for both Texas and the Netherlands. As part of the investigations, a hackathon with more than 80 participants was organized to collect and analyze available public information. Houston was especially hard hit by flooding. During the event, all 22 watersheds in the greater Houston area experienced flooding. Many of Houston’s creeks and bayous exceeded their channel capacities, reaching water levels never before recorded. Across large portions of Harris County, rainfall totals exceeded the 1000-year return period. In addition, the water from the two reservoirs protecting downtown Houston (Addicks and Barker) were opened on August 28 to prevent catastrophic damages to the dams and further flooding in upstream communities. The releases exacerbated flooding in the areas downstream of the dams and an estimated 4,000 homes in neighborhoods downstream of the dams were impacted by flooding. The consequences of the event in the greater Houston area have been characterized in terms of economic damages, loss of life and impacts on critical infrastructure, airports and industry. In total, more than 100,000 homes were affected more than 70 fatalities were reported in the greater Houston area. The event highlighted the vulnerability of industrial facilities, as several cascading impacts (releases of toxic materials and explosions) were reported. Emergency response has been assessed. No large-scale mandatory evacuation was ordered before or during Harvey. However, it appeared that several local evacuations were ordered for areas with specific risks and circumstances. During the event, many people were trapped by rising waters necessitating a major rescue operation. In total, more than 10,000 rescues were made by professional and volunteer rescuers. Social media played an important role during the event and recovery, as an additional source of information, to inform emergency managers and as a means to organize community response e.g. for clean-up. Also, messages were conveyed through social media, e.g. a report of a levee breach that appeared to be incorrect afterwards. Major flooding is a problem that has multiple causes from both physical and social origin. Based on the investigations, recommendations for future research and lessons for flood management have been formulated. A better understanding of the issues studied in this report is expected to contribute to a knowledge basis for further in-depth investigations and future directions for flood risk reduction. Data collection and Report production funded by DIMI and DSys Special Case 'Houston Galveston Bay Region, Texas, USA' Project 'Harvey hackathon' and follow-up researc

Managing in-country transportation risks in humanitarian supply chains by logistics service providers: Insights from the 2015 Nepal earthquake

Humanitarian supply chains (HSCs) play a central role in effective and efficient disaster relief operations. Transportation has a critical share in HSCs and managing its risks helps to avoid further disruptions in relief operations. However, there is no common approach to or culture of risk management that its applicability has been studied through recent cases. This paper incorporates an empirical research design and makes a threefold contribution: first, it identifies in-country transportation risks during Nepal response. Second, we evaluate afore identified risks through an expert driven risk assessment grid. Third, we use our field data to study how some humanitarian organizations in Nepal response used logistics service providers for managing moderate- and high-level transportation risks. In this paper, we use both qualitative and quantitative methods. Our qualitative analysis reveals that some of the most important in-country transportation risks were delivery delays; market fluctuations; insufficient capacity; loss of cargo; cargo decay; unreliable information; and ethical concerns. Our quantitative work shows that while participants categorized the first three risks as high-level, the rest were ranked as moderate-level. More investigation in our field data indicates that using logistics service providers (LSPs) helped humanitarians significantly to manage afore in-country transportation risks during Nepal response. It also improved overall HSC performance with respect to flexibility, effectiveness, efficiency, and responsiveness. While this finding empirically confirms the “tools” role of LSPs for managing in-country transportation risks in response, it implies another role for LSPs; “contributors” to performance improvements.acceptedVersionnivå

Beyond Early: Decision Support for Improved Typhoon Warning Systems

-Warnings can help prevent damage and harm if they are issued timely and provide information that help responders and population to adequately prepare for the disaster to come. Today, there are many indicator and sensor systems that are designed to reduce disaster risks, or issue early warnings. In this paper we analyze the different systems in the light of the initial decisions that need to be made in the response to sudden onset disasters. We outline challenges of current practices and methods, and provide an agenda for future research. To illustrate our approach, we present a case study of Typhoon Haiyan. Although meteorological services had issued warnings; relief goods were prepositioned; and responders pre-deployed, the delivery of aid was delayed in some of the worst hit regions. We argue for an integrated consideration of preparedness and response to provide adequate thresholds for early warning systems that focus on decision-makers needs

Defining and measuring the network flexibility of humanitarian supply chains: insights from the 2015 Nepal earthquake

The efficient and effective response to disasters critically depends on humanitarian supply chains (HSCs). HSCs need to be flexible to adapt to uncertainties in needs, infrastructure conditions, and behavior of other organizations. The concept of ‘network flexibility’ is, however, not clearly defined. The lack of an unanimous definition has led to a lack of consistent understanding and comparisons. This paper makes a threefold contribution: first, it defines the concept of network flexibility for HSC in the context of sudden onset disasters. Second, it proposes a framework to measure network flexibility in HSCs. Third, we apply our framework to the 2015 Nepal earthquake case and provide evidence-based insights regarding how humanitarian organizations can improve network flexibility in HSCs. Our analyses for Nepal case show that delivery, IT support, and fleet criteria have the most influence on flexibility. Also, the application of our framework on the downstream network of nine humanitarian organizations shows low levels of network flexibility in all but one. This finding explains why several disruptions happened in relief distributions during the Nepal response.Published VersionNivå