INFORM Index for Risk Management: Concept and Methodology, Version 2017

This is the forth report of the revised INFORM’s concept and methodology. INFORM is a composite indicator that identifies countries at risk of humanitarian crisis and disaster that would overwhelm national response capacity. The INFORM index supports a proactive crisis and disaster management framework.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Index for Risk Management - InfoRM: Concept and Methodology

The Index for Risk Management (InfoRM) initiative began in October 2012 as a convergence of interests of United Nations agencies, humanitarian donors and the European Commission to establish a common evidence-base for global humanitarian risk analysis. A concept was developed by a core group of agencies and presented publicly at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in May 2013. The JRC is the technical partner and has developed the methodology for the composite indicator. The current document describes the final methodology that will be used for the publication of the first InfoRM Index in early 2014.JRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen

GIS-based method to assess seismic vulnerability of interconnected infrastructure: A case of EU gas and electricity networks

Our study concerns the interconnected European Electricity and Gas transmission grid where we address two important issues of these interdependent critical infrastructures. First we assessed the response under seismic hazard for each independent network; then we analysed the increased vulnerability due to coupling between these two heterogeneous networks. We developed a probability reliability model that encompasses the spatial distribution of the network structures using a Geographic Information System (GIS). We applied the seismic risk assessment of individual network facilities and presented the results in the form of the system fragility curves of the (independent and dependant) networks in terms of various performance measures - connectivity loss, power loss, and impact on the population. We characterized the coupling behaviour between the two networks as a physical dependency: here the electricity grid, in part, depends on the gas network due to the generation capacity of gas-fired power plants. The dependence of one network on the other is modelled with an interoperability matrix, which is defined in terms of the strength of coupling; additionally we consider how the mechanical-structural fragility of the pipelines of the gas-source supply stream contributes to this dependence. In addition to network-wide assessment, damage was also evaluated at a local level by examining the performance status of each and every electricity distribution substation in the electricity grid. Finally, the comprehensive geographical distributions of performance loss at the European level can be visualized on a GIS tool; showing, as expected, that the highest direct damage in southeast Europe.JRC.DG.G.5-European laboratory for structural assessmen

INFORM Covid-19 Risk Index

The INFORM COVID-19 Risk Index is an experimental adaptation of the INFORM Epidemic Risk Index and aims to identify: “countries at risk from health and humanitarian impacts of COVID-19 that could overwhelm current national response capacity, and therefore lead to a need for additional international assistance”. It can be used to support prioritization of preparedness and early response actions for the primary impacts of the pandemic, and identify countries where secondary impacts are likely to have the most critical humanitarian consequences. The main scope of the INFORM COVID-19 Risk Index is global and regional risk-informed resource allocation, i.e. where comparable understanding of countries’ risk is important. It cannot predict the impacts of the pandemic in individual countries.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

A European Framework for Recording and Sharing Disaster Damage and Loss Data

The recently adopted ‘Sendai Framework for Action on Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030’ sets the goals to reduce loss of life, livelihood and critical infrastructure through enhanced national planning and international cooperation. The new Framework is expected to enhance global, regional and national efforts for building resilience to disasters, across the entire disaster management cycle (prevention, preparedness, response and early recovery). Improved monitoring and accountability frameworks, relying on harmonized disaster loss data will be required for meeting the targets and for capturing the levels of progress across different scales of governance. To overcome the problems of heterogeneous disaster data and terminologies, guidelines for reporting disaster damage and losses in a structured manner will be necessary to help national and regional bodies compile this information. In the European Union, the Member States and the European Commission worked together on the establishment of guidelines for recording and sharing disaster damage and loss data as a first step towards the development of operational indicators to translate the Sendai Framework into action. This paper describes the progress to date in setting a common framework for recording disaster damage and loss data in the European Union and identifies the challenges ahead.JRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen

INFORM report 2020: Shared evidence for managing crisis and disaster

INFORM partners believe that the availability of shared analysis of crises and disasters can lead to better coordination of actors and better outcomes for at-risk and affected people. Specifically, INFORM creates a space and process for shared analysis that can support joint strategy development, planning and action to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from crises. This can bring together development, humanitarian and other actors to manage risk and respond better when crises do occur. This report sets out INFORM’s vision for a suite of products to support decision-making that are easy to use and open to everyone. This vision involves bringing scientific rigour to the process of analysing crises and pooling expertise to develop shared methodologies. By working together, we can reduce the investments required by individual organisations, assure the quality of our analysis and make it available for the common good.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Imputation of missing values in the INFORM Global Risk Index

Although they have been selected on the basis of their reliability, consistency, continuity and completeness, most of indicators used in INFORM Global Risk Index do not have global coverage and neither are issued regularly every year. This results in a significant number of missing values, irregularly distributed among countries, time and indicators. The main motivations for imputing missing values arise from the need to create consistent trends that would otherwise not be possible due to the lack of data in the indicator’s time series, and to increase the reliability of the single compound release. In the presented study we focus on better understanding the patterns and mechanisms of missing values in the INFORM GRI model, and on evaluating their impact on the model’s outputs. The scope is to develop a missing data imputation strategy to be implemented in the INFORM GRI that will strongly depend on the reason why data is missing.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Usage of INFORM GRI in Humanitarian Aid and Development Assistance Initiatives

After five years since the first official release of INFORM GRI in 2014, the INFORM GRI's Impact Survey aimed at assessing the current usage of INFORM GRI, the impact its usage has had in decision-making, the support and promotion it has received and the improvements and future endeavours that are considered necessary. The multiple choice survey has been left open for six weeks on the EUSurvey platform. It has been open to any users wishing to contribute to it. Nineteen contributions have been submitted, seventeen from the INFORM partners and two from other users. The results have essentially confirmed the expectations. Among the contributors to the survey, the regular users of INFORM GRI and the occasional users are almost even. However, regular users are using it very frequently, more than seasonally. This seems to indicate still a high usage of the tool, despite the number of occasional users. INFORM GRI is then used for several reasons, above all for country analyses but also for supporting decision-making for allocation of resources in humanitarian aid. It is used in combination with other quantitative and qualitative measures and often adapted to the users' specific needs. INFORM GRI has provided humanitarian and development practitioners with a shared tool based on an agreed methodology that has supported evidence based analyses and decisions as well as the adoption of a risk based approach. Nonetheless, there is still a lot to be done for making humanitarian and development assistance more effective and coordinated. INFORM GRI is generally promoted internally within the organisation but also externally with partner organisations to a more limited extent. Finally, the clear outcome is that the regional or subnational model is the most required, followed by a seasonally updated index and less by a hazard dependent index. The idea of a platform for sharing knowledge, data and best practices needs to be better clarified instead. It has received positive feedback, although there is some uncertainty and reluctance with respect to the collaboration and sharing of the contents of it.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Recording Disaster Losses: Recommendations for a European approach

In a study commissioned by Directorate General Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection of the European Commission, the Joint Research Centre formulates technical recommendations for a European approach to standardize loss databases. Loss data are useful for the implementation of disaster risk reduction strategies in Europe (from local to national scales) and to help understand disaster loss trends at global level. Taking stock of existing work, the study defines a conceptual framework for the utility of loss data which allows a cost-benefit analysis of implementation scenarios. The framework considered loss accounting, disaster forensics and risk modelling. Depending on the scale (detail of recording) and scope (geographic coverage), technical requirements will be more or less stringent, and costs of implementation will vary accordingly. The technical requirements proposed in this study rely as much as possible on existing standards, best practices and approaches found in literature, international and national organisations and academic institutions. The requirements cover very detailed recording (at asset level) as well as coarse scale recording. Limitations and opportunities of existing EU legislation are considered as the EU context.JRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen

From Complex Networks to Time Series Analysis and Viceversa: Application to Metabolic Networks

In this work we present a simple and fast approach to generate network structures based on time series recurrence plots and viceversa. In addition, we discuss the application of the different analysis techniques developed in both fields, i.e. complex networks and time series analysis. Concerning the transformation from time series to networks, we propose a deterministic growth procedure which produces a new types of complex network structures that have some interesting features. This simple and fast approach is able to generate deterministic network structures based on time series recurrence plots. The generated networks contain several properties of the original time series. In this case, networks generated from chaotic attractors display interesting features from the point of view of robustness which could help in designing systems with high tolerance against errors and transfer of information. Chaotic networks based on the Lorenz attractor show that they are highly tolerant against attacks and they have a high ability for the transfer of information or on the contrary they are able to transmit infections faster. It is still necessary to investigate if such chaotic networks exist already in natural or man-made systems or, if possible, to construct such networks and test their properties. On the other hand, the transformation from networks to time series presents some problems concerning the selection of the initial time or in our case the initial node and the way in which the nodes are visited. If a network has been generated following a certain growth law it seems logical to choose the first node as the origin and then proceed following the network growth pattern. However, the situation is not so clear for example with metabolic networks, where it is difficult to select which is the first metabolite. Similar concerns would apply to other types of biological networks. In this case several alternatives could be considered, e.g. ordering using the number of connections. However, we have still to find if there are some invariant/preserved properties in the generated time series from the same network. We have found that rescaled range analysis does not preserve the fractal structure in the time series. In any case, if time series parameters would be invariant against the initial node selection, then they could be used to analyze the networks that have generated said time series. Our future work will continue along these lines.JRC.I.6-Systems toxicolog