Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PARATUS (Promoting disaster preparedness and resilience by co-developing stakeholder support tools for managing the systemic risk of compounding disasters)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2022-10-01 do 2024-01-31
The recent COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis have taught us hard lessons about the vulnerability of our societies to disasters, especially when several events worsen their impact. These compounding events have become more frequent and are expected to result in more complex disruptions in our critical sectors. These systemic risks, caused by the cascading impact of disasters, where direct damage in one sector leads to indirect losses in another, put a test to the resilience of our societies. Recent examples of such compounding events include the 2021 eruption of the Soufriere volcano during the COVID-19 pandemic on the Caribbean Island of Saint Vincent, the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in February 2023, compounding the effect of the civil war, or the devastating cross border flooding in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany in 2021.
Disaster risk management stakeholders face the challenge of adapting their risk reduction policies and emergency plans but often lack the tools to account for the cross-sectoral impacts and the dynamic nature of the risks involved. The PARATUS project aims to fill this gap by developing an open-source platform for dynamic risk assessment that allows to analyze and evaluate multi-hazard impact chains, risk reduction measures, and disaster response scenarios in the light of systemic vulnerabilities and uncertainties.
These services are co-created within a unique transdisciplinary consortium of research organizations, NGOs, SMEs, first and second responders, and local and regional authorities. To gain a deeper understanding of multi-hazard impact chains, PARATUS conducted forensic analyses of historical disaster events, added hazard interactions and sectorial impacts to historical disaster databases, and exploited remote sensing data with artificial intelligence methods. Building on these insights, PARATUS aims to develop new exposure and vulnerability analysis methods that enable systemic risk assessment across sectors (e.g. humanitarian, transport, communication) and geographical settings (e.g. islands, mountains, megacities). These methods will be used to analyze risk changes across space and time, and to develop new scenarios and risk mitigation options together with stakeholders, using innovative serious games and social simulations. The approaches and tools are developed and tested together with stakeholders from four case study areas. With the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, the project analyses the optimal location of evacuation and logistics centers in this Megacity. In the Alps, the project analyses together with the highway authority how major obstruction of the cross-border Brenner corridor can be reduced. In the Caribbean, the project supports regional organizations in developing suitable multi-hazard risk assessment approaches, such as impact-based forecasting, and works with national stakeholders on risk-informed planning. In Romania, the project works with the National Civil Protection organization on improving disaster preparedness for complex events in Bucharest.
The results will be hosted on two stakeholder hubs, one on CMINE (for first responders) and one on a platform for humanitarian applications, which will provide stakeholders with a set of tools for risk reduction planning in dynamic multi-hazard environments. The service-oriented approach with active stakeholder involvement will maximize the uptake and impact of the project and help to increase Europe’s resilience to compounding disasters.
Disaster risk management stakeholders face the challenge of adapting their risk reduction policies and emergency plans but often lack the tools to account for the cross-sectoral impacts and the dynamic nature of the risks involved. The PARATUS project aims to fill this gap by developing an open-source platform for dynamic risk assessment that allows to analyze and evaluate multi-hazard impact chains, risk reduction measures, and disaster response scenarios in the light of systemic vulnerabilities and uncertainties.
These services are co-created within a unique transdisciplinary consortium of research organizations, NGOs, SMEs, first and second responders, and local and regional authorities. To gain a deeper understanding of multi-hazard impact chains, PARATUS conducted forensic analyses of historical disaster events, added hazard interactions and sectorial impacts to historical disaster databases, and exploited remote sensing data with artificial intelligence methods. Building on these insights, PARATUS aims to develop new exposure and vulnerability analysis methods that enable systemic risk assessment across sectors (e.g. humanitarian, transport, communication) and geographical settings (e.g. islands, mountains, megacities). These methods will be used to analyze risk changes across space and time, and to develop new scenarios and risk mitigation options together with stakeholders, using innovative serious games and social simulations. The approaches and tools are developed and tested together with stakeholders from four case study areas. With the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, the project analyses the optimal location of evacuation and logistics centers in this Megacity. In the Alps, the project analyses together with the highway authority how major obstruction of the cross-border Brenner corridor can be reduced. In the Caribbean, the project supports regional organizations in developing suitable multi-hazard risk assessment approaches, such as impact-based forecasting, and works with national stakeholders on risk-informed planning. In Romania, the project works with the National Civil Protection organization on improving disaster preparedness for complex events in Bucharest.
The results will be hosted on two stakeholder hubs, one on CMINE (for first responders) and one on a platform for humanitarian applications, which will provide stakeholders with a set of tools for risk reduction planning in dynamic multi-hazard environments. The service-oriented approach with active stakeholder involvement will maximize the uptake and impact of the project and help to increase Europe’s resilience to compounding disasters.
PARATUS has developed an effective methodology to make better predictions for the future by understanding and analyzing the dynamic and interactive conditions of risk. Remote sensing time series analysis are used in combination with Artificial Intelligence to improve data on historical events and for multi-temporal exposure datasets.ì We have applied a combination of Forensic analysis approaches to a set of learning case studies (selected past disaster events) to analyze and apply the complexity of disaster impacts in different contexts, also drawing on knowledge, data, and information from previous European projects. PARATUS has actively involved stakeholders at different levels in the process, including in the co-creation of a qualitative conceptualization of complex disaster events using systemic impact chain analysis. Key highlights of the first period include the co-development of future scenarios of multi-hazard events with stakeholders in the test areas, considering changes in climate conditions and dynamic exposure information and their interactions. We re-analyzed historic hazard events under new conditions, to enable the development of new multi-hazard scenarios (including emerging risks that have not yet been observed) for different sectors (e.g. built environment, social sectors, health, transport, tourism), co-creation of context-specific decision-making tools suitable for stakeholders in different sectors and risk governance settings. Stakeholders co-develop and test methods and tools for selecting appropriate disaster risk mitigation measures that address Social Sciences and Humanities aspects. We are developing serious games, exploring creativity and experiential learning, using in-person/ video processes and augmented reality. development of a service to analyze dynamic exposure, vulnerability, and systemic risk, that can be applied in all phases of the disaster risk management cycle. We are building an online, user-centered methodology and tool for systemic risk assessment, co-designed with stakeholders and addressing physical, socio-economic, and environmental aspects. It consists of an information service and a simulation service, which allows users to develop and assess their own multi-hazard risk scenarios.
One of the most important results in this reporting period is the development of the web-based modelling application FastFlood, which has been very successful in reducing the effort required for flood modelling, allowing non-experts to quickly develop flood scenarios and see the effect of risk mitigation measures before the actual flood hazard modelling is done by experts. The tool is also very promising for the development of flood early warning systems and impact-based forecasting. This tool (www.fastflood.org) attracts an average of 4000 visitors per month.