Final Report Summary - HARMONISE (Holistic Approach to Resilience and Systematic Actions to make Large Scale UrbaN Built Infrastructure Secure)
Executive Summary:
For the first time, more than 50% of the world's population live in urban areas. By 2050, c. 70% of people are likely to be city dwellers, compared with less than 30% in 1950. This trend brings with it increased security and safety threats in urban areas, not least to urban built infrastructure. The central aim of HARMONISE (A Holistic Approach to Resilience and Systematic ActiOns to Make Large Scale UrbaN Built Infrastructure SEcure) is to develop a comprehensive, multi-faceted, yet mutually-reinforcing concept for the enhanced security, resilience and sustainability of large scale urban built infrastructure and development.
Large scale urban built infrastructure is a critical component within the intertwined networks of urban areas, which include not only physical components, but also integrated hardware and software aspects. To date, a comprehensive and holistic approach to improve the resilience and security of large scale urban developments (i.e. shopping centres/areas, sports venues or business centres with underground transportation nodes) against attacks and disruptions, has not been developed thoroughly.
HARMONISE will be grounded in a holistic view of innovation, and will advocate synergies with, and augmentation of, relevant existing, past or ongoing projects. The project recognises the necessity to improve the design of urban areas and increase their security against, and resilience, to new threats. Specifically, HARMONISE seeks to deliver (a) a holistic urban resilience integrated information platform; (b) a suite of innovative tools (toolkit hosted within the HARMONISE platform); (c) greater understanding and awareness of urban security and resilience vis-a-vis dissemination activities; and, (d) commercialisation opportunities among emerging new markets in this field. HARMONISE will result in significant resilience enhancement methods for large scale urban built infrastructure.
Project Context and Objectives:
A range of adverse natural and terrorist disturbances occurring over the last decade have highlighted the growing need for urban systems and their constituent large scale built infrastructure to cope with unexpected shocks and their impacts. In view of the ongoing threats posed by attacks and disruptions, a concerted, holistic concept is needed to ensure resilience enhancements (to built infrastructure) and greater urban security.
Large scale urban built infrastructure is a critical component within the intertwined networks of urban areas. To date, a comprehensive and holistic approach to improve the resilience and security of large scale urban development’s (i.e. shopping centres/areas, sports venues or business centres with underground transportation nodes) against natural and man-made disasters, can only been considered to be in its infancy and has not been developed thoroughly.
The central aim of the HARMONISE (A Holistic Approach to Resilience and SysteMatic ActiOns to Make Large Scale UrbaN Built Infrastructure SEcure) project is to develop a comprehensive, multi-faceted, yet mutually-reinforcing concept for the enhanced security, resilience and sustainability of large scale urban built infrastructure and development.HARMONISE will formulate and develop a holistic concept for urban resilience and security, and will result in the generation of systematic actions to ensure that the design and planning of large scale urban built infrastructure more comprehensively considers security aspects within an integrated and dynamic process. Specifically, HARMONISE will:
• Facilitate a systematic approach (vis-a-vis the HARMONISE Interactive Semantic Intelligence Platform) to develop a security and resilience concept for a combination of complex and dynamic urban systems;
• Deliver supporting tools (hosted within the platform) for the design/planning stage of large scale urban built infrastructure development, tested/enhanced through quality case studies;
• Provide an integrated approach to sharing building infrastructure and security information (building operation systems traditionally work in isolation) including critical flows of materials/energy and sensor technologies etc, while recognising the important role of security culture and societal acceptance aspects;
• Be conducive to complementarities with other EU 7th FP projects, not least VITRUV (in which FAC is a partner), RIBS (which UCL, a member of the HARMONISE advisory panel, is coordinating) and DESURBS (in which UB is a partner);
• Advocate and promote a significant exploitation programme to capitalise on new market opportunities, enhancing the pool of European expertise and fully supported by a comprehensive education/training curriculum; and, ultimately,
• Improve the design
Project Results:
The general aim of HARMONISE – A Holistic Approach to Resilience and Systematic Actions to Make Large Scale Built Infrastructure Secure – was to develop a comprehensive, multi-faceted, yet mutually reinforcing concept for the enhanced security, resilience and sustainability of urban infrastructure and development. HARMONISE aimed to result in resilience enhancement methods for large scale urban built infrastructure.
One of the primary intended outputs of the HARMONISE project was an advanced online Platform, the purpose of which is to facilitate the adoption of a holistic and integrated approach to urban resilience. The HARMONISE Platform enables stakeholders with varying educational and professional backgrounds to contribute and collaborate in the planning, design, construction, operation and management of urban built infrastructure. The HARMONISE Platform acts as a ‘one stop shop’ for resilience information and guidance, providing a comprehensive selection of the most relevant information on urban resilience, selected by the top European experts in this field and supported with the real life knowledge created by several case studies. It includes semantic intelligence, which enables better understanding of data, linkages between unstructured information and tools, and more sophisticated answers to users’ various needs. Furthermore, the Platform also hosts eight newly developed HARMONISE tools, which were created and tested by the HARMONISE partners (in addition to a range of already existing online resources and guidance).
In developing the Platform, two overarching requirements were identified as follows:
1. Information which is readily accessible and of use to a range of end-users; and
2. A process of accessing this information which assists users in enhancing the resilience of large scale urban built infrastructure – and which promotes more holistic and integrated decision making.
To achieve this central goal, the HARMONISE Platform is structured by the Thematic Framework, which provides a ‘tagging’ system for all information and tools hosted within. This structuring is important as it forms the basis for the Platform search functionality, and ensures that users receive search results which are relevant for their specific needs. The user is encouraged to follow an innovative step-by-step search process, selecting search criteria from a number of overarching themes such as ‘Infrastructure Type’; ‘Hazard Type’ or ‘Resilience Cycle Stage’ This step-by-step process is important as it highlights and builds awareness around the differing resilience needs at various points of intervention (differences between the planning stage and operation stage, for example) and around the various resilience cycle stages (mitigation interventions prior to an extreme event and recovery interventions after an event, for example).
The framework emphasises to the user that resilience is a process rather than an ‘end point’, and as such encourages continuous reviews of plans over time. Furthermore, the search themes (and subsequent search results) are not organised around particular built environment disciplines. Rather, the process seeks to promote interdisciplinary working, allowing the user to gain insight into potential resilience issues or opportunities in other related sectors and works towards building mutual objectives and addressing disciplinary differences. Collaborative working is of utmost importance particularly when faced with an extreme event as such disturbances often highlight the interdependencies in urban built infrastructure. The collapse of the World Trade Centre towers during the 9/11 attacks, for example, caused extensive damage to the slurry wall or ‘‘bathtub’’ that surrounded the buildings’ deep basements. Had the slurry wall failed, this would have resulted in the wholesale flooding of New York’s underground rail transit system which would have untold implications in terms of additional fatalities. Thus achieving a ‘holistic approach’ to the development and protection of large scale urban built infrastructure is essential, with an awareness of where failure in one building/building complex can lead to a cascade of failures elsewhere.
Ultimately, the HARMONISE Platform aims to support the planning, design, construction and operation/management of urban built infrastructure by creating an environment that fosters mutual understanding and potentially leads to a shared and more harmonised vision of urban resilience. The platform utilises appropriate representation techniques and mechanisms that enable different processes related to urban resilience development and management to become more understandable, which reduces, for example, the knowledge and communication gaps between urban resilience stakeholders.
In addition, the HARMONISE project also resulted in the development of a suite of eight advanced tools for urban resilience enhanced, which are hosted within the online Platform. These tools are as follows:
1. Planning and Design Guidance Tool (PDGT)
The HARMONISE Planning and Design Guidance Tool (PDGT) has been developed to help balance issues of urban security and resilience with good design. It is an online interactive repository that contains advice for enhancing the resilience of large scale urban built infrastructure at the planning, design and construction stages of these projects. End users enter their requirements by answering a number of short questions and are then directed to a series of bespoke guidance pages tailored to their individual needs and preferences. The guidance is summarised from a range of existing planning and design guidance material and is presented with links to more detailed information.
The PGDT is aimed at built environment professionals (e.g. architects, urban planners) who are seeking to enhance the security and resilience of large scale urban development. Although there already exists a range of planning and urban design guidance that can (directly and indirectly) enhance the resilience of urban areas, ‘resilience’ as a concept is rarely acknowledged explicitly and it can be difficult to find planning and design guidance that specifically addresses the theme of urban resilience. The search process and the amount of time spent reading through many separate guidance documents could be viewed as excessive. Moreover, built environment professionals may not have the satisfaction that they have found all the information that is available. This tool aims to address this gap, and brings many existing planning and design guidelines together, situating their use within a wider resilience context and promoting their use in an integrated manner.
2 Economic Evaluation Tool
The Economic Evaluation Tool, RESEC, was developed to support the assessment of economic impacts arising from natural and man-maid disasters in urban areas and the decision-making on protective, mitigation and adaptation measures with the aim to enhance the security and resilience. RESEC is a decision-support approach to be applied in the investment planning phase. It supports the decision-makers with their aim to make more transparent, systematic and reliable decisions by creating a common understanding of the decision alternatives and their possible consequences before the decision takes place.
Using any resource for the risk mitigation in urban areas means that the opportunity to use that same resource for something else is lost. Therefore, cost-effectiveness (or “value” for money spent) is of central concern in most cities. Economic evaluation is one of the tools available to help choose wisely from a range of alternatives and implement efficient resources.
RESEC targets decision makers and experts in designing, planning and management of urban areas and infrastructure. It can also be used for the purposes of insurance companies, private sector investors or international aid providers. The approach supports the aims of more transparent, systematic, and reliable decision making, creating a common understanding of the alternatives and their possible consequences before the decision takes place.
3. Security Supervision System integrating Crowd monitoring and Flow analysis
The Security Supervision System, a PSIM system (Physical Security Information Management), is a platform designed to integrate heterogeneous security devices and application in order to create a unique and integrated view of the monitored scenario. As part of the HARMONISE project two tools will be developed and integrated within the Security Supervision System – the crowd monitoring tool and the flow analysis tool (both outlined in the following sections).
The system is able to receive and correlate heterogeneous events from different security systems (new systems as well as legacy ones), while having a unique presentation and business logic, independent from the device, and guide the operator, through a workflow engine, to the resolution of any abnormal situations identified.
The Security Supervision System tool is a technological tool able to support site operation management of ordinary and extraordinary situations; in particular it gives a helpful contribution to detect possible critical situations and to react to them with the most appropriate response activity. Besides, it allows viewing live video streams to identify rapidly critical situations through a monitoring activity and to perform investigation activity consulting recordings for investigation purpose based on either detected events or free searches.Moreover the tool is also suitable for policy-decision makers from the local government (local authority officers, urbanism department, transport department, transport and mobility department) for the capacity of integrating different vertical sub-systems from the diverse domains of a city (mobility, security, territory,..) and the possibility to correlate and aggregate this heterogeneous information and present it at different level of details.
The Security Supervision System integrated tool presents some of the core capabilities useful to support:
• Town administrators and law enforcement agencies in their daily tasks in normal and critical situations of a city or a region;
• Security and safety management processes of a big event providing well-informed situational awareness and crisis management.
4. Multi-Building Integrator
The Multi-Building Integrator (MBI) is an automatic, location-based software service to share event notifications that are created in technical systems of nearby buildings (security/BMS systems) direct to other nearby buildings. Information about the situation can be also shown on public info screens. Unlike the existing tools, Multi-Building Integrator exchanges information automatically between local technical systems, reflecting IoT (Internet of Things) and M2M (Machine to Machine) paradigms.
In dense urban areas a problem or an event in one building may have significant impact on nearby buildings or even the whole area. When these events are detected by the local technical systems (e.g. security, safety, Building Management System) an alarm is generated in only one building, and it may also be passed on to a central alarm handling centre, by default these technical systems do not share information directly from system to system. Precious time in situations of risk and danger could be saved if there were new ways of handling the situation without waiting for human intervention.
The Multi-Building Integrator creates an automated mechanism to exchange real-time event information between technical systems in a location-based manner. The primary purpose of the Multi-Building Integrator is to receive already existing information from technical systems in buildings about events of risk/danger, and to distribute it to other nearby buildings, which might be influenced by the event. The added value is to enable automatic sharing of alarms and other events, direct from system to system, in a location-based manner. The tool helps avoiding delays in receiving the information and supports smart sharing on selected local media, e.g. info screens. The target group for the tool includes technical managers and BMS operators, for example.
5. Risk and Resilience Assessment Tool
The purpose of this tool is to quantify the risk and resilience level of an urban infrastructure or a group of infrastructures to blast events (terrorism) that are capable of causing catastrophic losses in fatalities, injuries, damage, or business interruption.
Thus, the tool prioritizes the relative risk among a group of buildings but it can also be used to develop building-specific risk information. As a blast or explosive threat is one of the most common types of terrorist attack, the development approach of this mentioned tool is focused mainly on explosive attacks, both internal and external to the critical infrastructure.
This tool provides a quick and simple way to obtain an initial risk and resilience assessment rating for large scale critical infrastructure exposed to hazards that result from explosions.
The tool is intended to be the first step in a tiered assessment process that includes successively more refined analyses when more detailed information is needed. The primary purpose of the tool is to prioritise the relative risk or resilience among a group of buildings in an estate or community. The results can also be used on a building-specific basis as a prioritisation tool for more detailed study, verification of results, and development of mitigation measures that will reduce the risk or resilience rating value to levels that are more acceptable to the building owner or other stakeholders. The tool is intended for use by both technical and stakeholder audiences.
The tool is an excel-based tool which can consider internal blast, external blast and external nearby target infrastructure blast. The algorithms use information of the building interior, exterior and public areas obtained from its inspection, documentation or involved people knowledge.
The features of a building that are evaluated are physical components, functions or operations that relates to consequences, attractiveness or vulnerability. These characteristics are already display and scored for the user. Thus, the user just evaluates each feature by selecting between some given options. The building features with heavily weighted scoring require more careful consideration than the others.
The tool calculates automatically the Risk and Resilience Scores based on mathematical algorithms and weight factors.
Scores are classified into low, moderate or high risk. Buildings identified as high risk or low resilience should receive the highest priority for further evaluation. The specific cut-off can be modified on the priorities of the stakeholders.
6. Human Damage Mapping Methodologies
The purpose of this tool is to determine a probabilistic damage mapping of people populating an urban area in which a blast attack (terrorism) occurs. The objective is to include not only the maximum possible impact of an accident but also the maximum probable impact. As a blast or explosive threat is one of the most common types of terrorist attack, the development approach of this mentioned methodology is focused mainly on explosive attacks.
The tool is an excel-based tool but the obtained results are fundamentally based on advanced numerical model analyses. Thus, the algorithms for obtaining the degree of damage that will suffer the exposed population at a specific position are embedded in the excel-based tool and results will be provided as a function of pressure – impulse maps as well as human damage maps.
These numerical models solve the underlying equations describing the behaviour of gases, combustibles and solids and allow obtaining the key parameters (peak pressure and specific impulse) for each spatial position in the 3D scenario. The pressures and impulses obtained in the entire environment or scenario can be imported into the human mapping tool. Some of the needed inputs to generate the analysis scenario are: the geometry of the environment considered (mounds, buildings...) the location of the original explosion, the type of explosion...
Different levels of human damage are considered based on probabilistic methods: eardrum rupture, lung hemorrhage, death by impact... The most typical considered damage is lung damage because, as far as people mortality is concerned, this is the most critical organ in blast pressure injuries. The user may analyse the distribution of damage or injury to people depending on not only their position but also the existing influence of the building and urban layout on the blast wave evolution. In addition, the injury to each person can be presented graphically using a colour-coding scheme.
The list of the stakeholder addressed with this tool is listed below:
• Security services like Police department, Civil Protection department to prepared emergency protocols in singular and critical events in urban areas.
• Blast Engineers and Architect in singular projects to improve the level of security of their project in critical and vulnerable areas.
• Infrastructure operators for the assessment of the consequences in case of blast events and have objective information for invest prioritization.
• Insurance companies for the assessment of the risk and causes of an explosion event.
The added value of these tools together with the new Risk Assessment Tool can be summarised in the following points:
• Easy to use for no-expert key agent due to the clearly definition and identification of most relevant indicator for risk and resilience assessment.
• Resilience approach based on the definition and identification of indicators influencing the “ability to resist, absorb and recover from adversity” as well as the “ability to skillfully prepare for, respond to and manage a crisis situation”.
• Effective interaction between both tools for the sake of most effective and accurate risk assessment, critical zone definition.
This tool must be understood as a high level complement of the previous risk assessment tool commented. Thus, not only the level of risk and resilience could be analyzed in an urban scenario but also, more detailed information about what could be the human damage could be obtained based, not only, on the human physical capacities, but also taking into account the existing interaction among the threat definition, the urban layout and the infrastructure configuration (geometrical characteristics, orientation, location).
7. Workbook of Participatory Foresight in Urban Resilience
The aim of conducting a foresight processes is to become more aware of the future and at the same time actively influence it. The HARMONISE Workbook of Participatory Foresight (WPF) supports decision makers in illustrating the future city and its constraints. Scenarios help to outline potential challenges, changes, new actors, risks, and opportunities faced in creating a more resilient city. The participatory approach enables multi-disciplinary cooperation, and hence, creates commonly acceptable and more transparent results.
The workbook is directed to regional and local decision makers’ needs. Scenario building helps decision makers to understand how things interact and what their dependencies are. By using these scenarios one can explore what the future might look like and what are the needed or likely changes that can boost realisation of a preferred scenario. A well-crafted scenario allows an organisation to be more proactive, working together to strive towards a common goal.
Scenarios are closely related to all stages of the resilience cycle, helping to create a more resilient development that is strong and spirited to tackle various kinds of risks and also innovative and open to new opportunities and challenges. The relationship between the WPF and resilience cycle is exemplified in the following:
• Mitigation - scenarios can assist in recognising new techniques that can reduce the vulnerability of urban infrastructure, finding new ways to improve security and reduce uncertainty;
• Preparedness - participatory scenario building highlights the role and knowhow of citizens and strengthens co-operation between different stakeholders and interest groups;
• Response - scenarios turn the focus into the future by investigating, for example, the future needs for rescue centres, crew, and equipment.
• Recovery - scenarios help in envisioning a post-disaster situation, identifying the need and availability of skilled human resources for future needs.
8. Educational tool
The HARMONISE Educational Tool is a multimedia interface which allows a learner to investigate the urban resilience milieu in one’s own time in an easily digestible format. It is designed to interpret the HARMONISE holistic resilience message and to provide intuitive links to the HARMONISE platform and tools. The tool provides typical urban images at the centre of a dashboard type display. The dashboard has both input ‘sliders’ (such as risk, cost and aesthetic appearance) and risk type (natural or terrorism) and output indicators (such as safety, economic performance and ‘net cost’). The tool allows users to experiment between a sharp focus on initial cost and an emphasis on aesthetic design and enables users to see that significant trade – offs exist and that a balanced approach provides the best net cost compromise.
The tool has an obvious educational operating environment, as a ‘jumping off point’ for further study in the resilience field. It also has a possible ‘operational deployment’ role in locations experiencing resilience challenges of a complex nature and who are undertaking disruptive physical prevention and /or mitigation public works.
In many urban areas attempts have been made to interpret the rationale for resilience activities – such as disruptive flood defence works or vehicle restrictions, via signboards or other print based media. In such a scenario the HARMONISE Educational Tool could be tailored to utilise locally relevant material and images to promote the basic rationale for the scheme – without providing excessive technical information which (in the case of anti-terrorism schemes) could be put to malicious use.
The purpose of the tool is educational in nature: to foster understanding of the holistic resilience perspective; to raise awareness of the need to understand conflicts and associated trade-offs; to raise awareness of available tools and to promote an integrated, holistic approach to the business of urban resilience planning and design for large scale urban built infrastructure.
All technical disciplines may have something to learn from the tool – however it will mostly be useful in selling the Harmonise concept to these highly knowledgeable and skilled practitioners, who will then go on to utilise the more specific, technical functionality of the Platform, such as the augmented search functionality, or specific tools such as Crowd Monitoring or Workbook of Participatory Foresight in Urban Resilience.
The tool will have a more focussed and valuable role in interpreting the implications of decisions to non-technical stakeholders – such as politicians, concerned citizens and related special interest groupings, which may come to the fore in the process of delivering large urban projects. It may also have the ability to be tailored to the specific requirements of a location, showing various physical actions that are required, with related implications for individuals and businesses.
The Tool fosters understanding of the holistic resilience perspective; raises awareness of the need to understand conflicts and associated trade-offs; raises awareness of available tools and promotes an integrated, holistic approach to the business of urban resilience planning and design for large scale urban built infrastructure. The tool is intended to provide enhanced access to the HARMONISE platform and to provide an adequate holistic introduction to the general subject area and then link to such tools, which themselves can provide detailed coverage of their specific domain, but often without adequate holistic perspective.
Potential Impact:
HARMONISE has worked towards the following core objectives:
• Provide a holistic security and resilience concept for a combination of complex and dynamic urban systems(vis-a-vis the HARMONISE Interactive Semantic Intelligence Platform);
• Deliver supporting tools (hosted within the platform) for the design, planning and operation of large scale urban built infrastructure, tested/enhanced through quality case studies;
• Provide an integrated approach to sharing building infrastructure and security information (building operation systems traditionally work in isolation) including critical flows of materials/energy and sensor technologies etc, while recognising the important role of security culture and societal acceptance aspects;
• Advocate and promote a significant exploitation programme to capitalise on new market opportunities, enhancing the pool of European expertise and fully supported by a comprehensive education/training curriculum; and, ultimately,
• Improve the design of urban areas and systems, increasing their security against, and resilience to, new threats.
HARMONISE has the potential to contribute significantly to building up the necessary capabilities for safeguarding security within urban decision making processes by delivering the required technologies and holistic concept approach for knowledge growth in support of these capabilities.
Beneficiaries of the HARMONISE project include, though are not limited to:
• National and local government authorities who have formal responsibility for delivering safer, more resilient urban built infrastructure;
• Utility companies and other businesses that build, operate, maintain and use a vast range of public/private buildings and infrastructure;
• A range of manufacturing, construction, engineering, and design organisations that provide components and services during the planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance of urban built infrastructure; and,
• The social and business communities who depend on urban built infrastructure for important work, recreation and service functions essential to their daily lives.
In addition, HARMONISE has clear benefits for societal well-being in the creation of resilient urban built infrastructure combining enhanced security and sustainability attributes which can, if (re)designed appropriately, contribute to enhanced quality of life and a safer and more secure public realm for those living in, working in or visiting urban areas. HARMONISE can provide a framework for maximising the application of smart building technologies both at a European level and globally.
Furthermore, it will bring about positive economic impacts, through for instance, increased confidence in built assets and confidence that increased protection of critical lifelines will induce and also through the promotion of innovation and co-ordination amongst business with interests in security, resilience or other aspect of urban built infrastructure. The project has the potential to shape and enhance the effectiveness (and cost) of urban security measures and thus the (financial) viability
of integrated urban resilience strategies. Specifically, it could contribute to reducing the cost of resiliency measures currently deployed in the built environment. This may occur, for example, though the facilitation of better decision-making which will ensure measures can be deployed at the appropriate time within the building cycle, or through the integration of counter-terrorism measures with environmental building techniques - creating a dual-use, and hence a more cost-effective solution.
WP6 of HARMONISE addressed the following core objectives:
1) Dissemination of project and non-confidential results
2) Commercial exploitation of concept, platform and tools post project completion
3) Provision of interactive platform and pedagogic tool for enhancing urban resilience and security of urban areas
4) Development of CPD proposals for education/training purposes
Via completion of a wide range of dissemination activities and the completion of each of the demanding Deliverables, it can be demonstrated that substantial progress has been made, with the Objectives of the Work Package broadly being met and in places exceeded, such as in the academic dissemination area.
Activity includes the following:
1. Informal demonstration: The AESOP / ACSP Joint Congress takes place every five years and it is the meeting of the European based AESOP (The Association of European Schools of Planning) and the US based ACSP (The Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning). The Dublin Congress took place in University College Dublin from 15th-19th July 2013. The theme was ‘Planning for Resilient Cities and Regions’.
2. Paper delivered at the Association of American Geographers (AAG)– Tampa - The punitive praxis of military-carceral space design
3. Paper delivered at The German Council of Prevention is organising the congress since twenty years. It has regularly more than 2.000 attendees from all fields of prevention (police, criminologists but also experts in urban planning held in Frankfurt (Germany).
4. Paper delivered at the Base London Conference 2014
5. Paper presented: AESOP 2014 – University of Utrecht July 2014 Coaffee, J. and Clarke, J.R.L. (2014) “Planning for urban stress: the role of resilient design in emergency response and recovery.”
6. Paper delivered at Future Security, Berlin 2014.
7. ESC ANNUAL CONFERENCE “Criminology of Europe: Inspiration by Diversity” 10th to 13th September 2014, Prague The conference was an open space for an exchange of ideas and of research findings in all areas of the criminological research. Beside the traditional orientation on victimology, penology, sociology and criminal justice, the aim is to attract the scholars in psychology, addictology, policing etc. Comparative research studies played an essential role in this effort.
8. Paper presented at Resilience: Just do it?! Workshop - University of Groningen October 2014: Clarke, J.R.L. (2014) “Resilience, Maladaption and Abductive Thinking: emerging concepts for urban design and planning.”
9. Project displayed BESECURE Final Event, Belfast.
10. Oral presentation of the HARMONISE concept to Dublin stakeholders including Dublin City Council.
11. Paper presented Association of American Geographers (AAG)– Chicago April 2015 Coaffee, J. and Clarke, J.R.L. (2015) “Unpacking the urban resilience ‘turn’: from concepts to implementation.”
12. Presentation at the Artificial Intelligence and Applications Research Group in Ulster University
13. HARMONISE case study workshop in London (first testing session). The first test session of the HARMONISE platform and tools in the London case study area provided the opportunity to introduce the project more generally to urban planners working at Southwark Council.
14. Paper presented to a Smart Cities Conference in Delhi, India
15. HARMONISE introduction and workshop with BDP employees (Manchester) A session was organised in BDP’s Manchester Studio to introduce the HARMONISE platform and tools to urban planners, urban designers and landscape architects within BDP.
16. The ECTP-CEU (European Council of Town Planners) Biennial was held in Dublin on the 15th and 16th October 2015. The theme was ‘Technology in Planning Practice - Making Cities Work’
17. RSA Early Careers, Sheffield October 2016 Clarke, J.R.L. (2015) “Design, Governance and Maladaptation: Urban Planning and Design Challenges for Enhanced Resilience.”
18. Presentation at ESR Dublin – European Security Research: The Next Wave
19. Oral presentation of the HARMONISE concept, together with the platform and toolkit, to Dublin stakeholders including Dublin City Council.
20. HARMONISE case study workshop in London (second testing session). The second London test session was organised with employees of BDP (London) and LeighFisher to introduce HARMONISE and test the updated platform and tools.
21. The Finnish National Rescue Association SPEK. SPEK organised a seminar, where several research institutes presented current research activities relating to safety and security. The seminar was held in Helsinki (Finland).
22. Presentation at What is going on in safety and security research? National Seminar organised by The Finnish National Rescue Association SPEK
23. Presentation AT The German Research Foundation (DFG) organised in cooperation with the IREUS institute an expert workshop on the topic of “Integrated Research for Enhancing the Resilience of Critical Infrastructures through Strategic Assessments and Innovative Planning Approaches". The roundtable took place at the University of Stuttgart (Germany).
24. Presentation to Intelligent Safety and Security – National Seminar of Finland organised by Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. 130 attendees representing safety and security authorities from national and regional levels and municipalities.
25. Presentation to Association of American Geographers (AAG)– San Francisco - Infrastructure lifelines and the geo-politics of resilience
26. Presentation at International Studies Association, Toronto, Smart urban resilience and the ambiguous politics of precautionary governance
27. Presentation at American Real Estate Society Conference, 2016, Denver
28. Presentation to Urban Geography Research Group, Cardiff April 2016. Clarke, J.R.L. (2015) “Urban Design Challenges for Enhanced Resilience.”
29. Paper published: Coaffee, J. (2013a) Rescaling and Responsibilising the Politics of Urban Resilience: From National Security to Local Place-Making, Politics, 33:4, 240–252
30. Paper published: Coaffee, J. (2013b) From Securitisation to Integrated Place Making: Towards Next Generation Urban Resilience in Planning Practice, Planning Practice and Research, 28:3, 323-339
31. Paper submitted: “ Multi-View User Similarity Aggregation in Collaborative Filtering Recommender Systems: Application to the Urban Resilience Domain” was submitted to the Journal of Knowledge Based Systems
32. Paper published: Coaffee, J. and Clarke, J.R.L. (2015) “Viewpoint: On implementing Urban Resilience”, Town Planning Review, 86(2).
33. Paper presented: “A Collaborative Filtering Recommender System Model Using OWA and Uninorm Aggregation Operators” presented at the Intelligent Systems and Knowledge Engineering (ISKE). The conference was attended by 200 delegates with a focus on current practice, experience and promising new ideas in the broad area of intelligent systems and knowledge engineering
34. Chapter published: Clarke, J.R.L. (2016) “From Maladaption to Adaption: A Resilient Urban Planning Paradigm” In: Chandler, D. and Coaffee, J. ed(s). ‘Handbook of International Resilience.’ Routledge, in press.
35. Paper published: Coaffee, J., Clarke, J.R.L. and Davis, P. (2016) "A HARMONISE’d approach to building security-driven urban resilience: a call to arms", Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction, Vol. 21 Iss: 1.
36. Paper accepted: Coaffee, J. and Clarke, J.R.L. (2016) “Critical Infrastructure and the Politics of Resilience”. Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, Accepted for publication.
37. Book published: Coaffee, J. and Lee, P. (2016) Urban Resilience: planning for risk crisis and uncertainty, Palgrave Macmillan,
38. Conference paper: Doyle, A; Ehimen, E; Hynes, W; and Purcell, S.M (2016) ‘Operationalising Resilience within Planning Practice: Towards an Online Decision Support Model’ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF E-PLANNING RESEARCH – Annual Conference, Lisbon, Portugal. March 2016.
List of Websites:
www.harmonise.eu
For the first time, more than 50% of the world's population live in urban areas. By 2050, c. 70% of people are likely to be city dwellers, compared with less than 30% in 1950. This trend brings with it increased security and safety threats in urban areas, not least to urban built infrastructure. The central aim of HARMONISE (A Holistic Approach to Resilience and Systematic ActiOns to Make Large Scale UrbaN Built Infrastructure SEcure) is to develop a comprehensive, multi-faceted, yet mutually-reinforcing concept for the enhanced security, resilience and sustainability of large scale urban built infrastructure and development.
Large scale urban built infrastructure is a critical component within the intertwined networks of urban areas, which include not only physical components, but also integrated hardware and software aspects. To date, a comprehensive and holistic approach to improve the resilience and security of large scale urban developments (i.e. shopping centres/areas, sports venues or business centres with underground transportation nodes) against attacks and disruptions, has not been developed thoroughly.
HARMONISE will be grounded in a holistic view of innovation, and will advocate synergies with, and augmentation of, relevant existing, past or ongoing projects. The project recognises the necessity to improve the design of urban areas and increase their security against, and resilience, to new threats. Specifically, HARMONISE seeks to deliver (a) a holistic urban resilience integrated information platform; (b) a suite of innovative tools (toolkit hosted within the HARMONISE platform); (c) greater understanding and awareness of urban security and resilience vis-a-vis dissemination activities; and, (d) commercialisation opportunities among emerging new markets in this field. HARMONISE will result in significant resilience enhancement methods for large scale urban built infrastructure.
Project Context and Objectives:
A range of adverse natural and terrorist disturbances occurring over the last decade have highlighted the growing need for urban systems and their constituent large scale built infrastructure to cope with unexpected shocks and their impacts. In view of the ongoing threats posed by attacks and disruptions, a concerted, holistic concept is needed to ensure resilience enhancements (to built infrastructure) and greater urban security.
Large scale urban built infrastructure is a critical component within the intertwined networks of urban areas. To date, a comprehensive and holistic approach to improve the resilience and security of large scale urban development’s (i.e. shopping centres/areas, sports venues or business centres with underground transportation nodes) against natural and man-made disasters, can only been considered to be in its infancy and has not been developed thoroughly.
The central aim of the HARMONISE (A Holistic Approach to Resilience and SysteMatic ActiOns to Make Large Scale UrbaN Built Infrastructure SEcure) project is to develop a comprehensive, multi-faceted, yet mutually-reinforcing concept for the enhanced security, resilience and sustainability of large scale urban built infrastructure and development.HARMONISE will formulate and develop a holistic concept for urban resilience and security, and will result in the generation of systematic actions to ensure that the design and planning of large scale urban built infrastructure more comprehensively considers security aspects within an integrated and dynamic process. Specifically, HARMONISE will:
• Facilitate a systematic approach (vis-a-vis the HARMONISE Interactive Semantic Intelligence Platform) to develop a security and resilience concept for a combination of complex and dynamic urban systems;
• Deliver supporting tools (hosted within the platform) for the design/planning stage of large scale urban built infrastructure development, tested/enhanced through quality case studies;
• Provide an integrated approach to sharing building infrastructure and security information (building operation systems traditionally work in isolation) including critical flows of materials/energy and sensor technologies etc, while recognising the important role of security culture and societal acceptance aspects;
• Be conducive to complementarities with other EU 7th FP projects, not least VITRUV (in which FAC is a partner), RIBS (which UCL, a member of the HARMONISE advisory panel, is coordinating) and DESURBS (in which UB is a partner);
• Advocate and promote a significant exploitation programme to capitalise on new market opportunities, enhancing the pool of European expertise and fully supported by a comprehensive education/training curriculum; and, ultimately,
• Improve the design
Project Results:
The general aim of HARMONISE – A Holistic Approach to Resilience and Systematic Actions to Make Large Scale Built Infrastructure Secure – was to develop a comprehensive, multi-faceted, yet mutually reinforcing concept for the enhanced security, resilience and sustainability of urban infrastructure and development. HARMONISE aimed to result in resilience enhancement methods for large scale urban built infrastructure.
One of the primary intended outputs of the HARMONISE project was an advanced online Platform, the purpose of which is to facilitate the adoption of a holistic and integrated approach to urban resilience. The HARMONISE Platform enables stakeholders with varying educational and professional backgrounds to contribute and collaborate in the planning, design, construction, operation and management of urban built infrastructure. The HARMONISE Platform acts as a ‘one stop shop’ for resilience information and guidance, providing a comprehensive selection of the most relevant information on urban resilience, selected by the top European experts in this field and supported with the real life knowledge created by several case studies. It includes semantic intelligence, which enables better understanding of data, linkages between unstructured information and tools, and more sophisticated answers to users’ various needs. Furthermore, the Platform also hosts eight newly developed HARMONISE tools, which were created and tested by the HARMONISE partners (in addition to a range of already existing online resources and guidance).
In developing the Platform, two overarching requirements were identified as follows:
1. Information which is readily accessible and of use to a range of end-users; and
2. A process of accessing this information which assists users in enhancing the resilience of large scale urban built infrastructure – and which promotes more holistic and integrated decision making.
To achieve this central goal, the HARMONISE Platform is structured by the Thematic Framework, which provides a ‘tagging’ system for all information and tools hosted within. This structuring is important as it forms the basis for the Platform search functionality, and ensures that users receive search results which are relevant for their specific needs. The user is encouraged to follow an innovative step-by-step search process, selecting search criteria from a number of overarching themes such as ‘Infrastructure Type’; ‘Hazard Type’ or ‘Resilience Cycle Stage’ This step-by-step process is important as it highlights and builds awareness around the differing resilience needs at various points of intervention (differences between the planning stage and operation stage, for example) and around the various resilience cycle stages (mitigation interventions prior to an extreme event and recovery interventions after an event, for example).
The framework emphasises to the user that resilience is a process rather than an ‘end point’, and as such encourages continuous reviews of plans over time. Furthermore, the search themes (and subsequent search results) are not organised around particular built environment disciplines. Rather, the process seeks to promote interdisciplinary working, allowing the user to gain insight into potential resilience issues or opportunities in other related sectors and works towards building mutual objectives and addressing disciplinary differences. Collaborative working is of utmost importance particularly when faced with an extreme event as such disturbances often highlight the interdependencies in urban built infrastructure. The collapse of the World Trade Centre towers during the 9/11 attacks, for example, caused extensive damage to the slurry wall or ‘‘bathtub’’ that surrounded the buildings’ deep basements. Had the slurry wall failed, this would have resulted in the wholesale flooding of New York’s underground rail transit system which would have untold implications in terms of additional fatalities. Thus achieving a ‘holistic approach’ to the development and protection of large scale urban built infrastructure is essential, with an awareness of where failure in one building/building complex can lead to a cascade of failures elsewhere.
Ultimately, the HARMONISE Platform aims to support the planning, design, construction and operation/management of urban built infrastructure by creating an environment that fosters mutual understanding and potentially leads to a shared and more harmonised vision of urban resilience. The platform utilises appropriate representation techniques and mechanisms that enable different processes related to urban resilience development and management to become more understandable, which reduces, for example, the knowledge and communication gaps between urban resilience stakeholders.
In addition, the HARMONISE project also resulted in the development of a suite of eight advanced tools for urban resilience enhanced, which are hosted within the online Platform. These tools are as follows:
1. Planning and Design Guidance Tool (PDGT)
The HARMONISE Planning and Design Guidance Tool (PDGT) has been developed to help balance issues of urban security and resilience with good design. It is an online interactive repository that contains advice for enhancing the resilience of large scale urban built infrastructure at the planning, design and construction stages of these projects. End users enter their requirements by answering a number of short questions and are then directed to a series of bespoke guidance pages tailored to their individual needs and preferences. The guidance is summarised from a range of existing planning and design guidance material and is presented with links to more detailed information.
The PGDT is aimed at built environment professionals (e.g. architects, urban planners) who are seeking to enhance the security and resilience of large scale urban development. Although there already exists a range of planning and urban design guidance that can (directly and indirectly) enhance the resilience of urban areas, ‘resilience’ as a concept is rarely acknowledged explicitly and it can be difficult to find planning and design guidance that specifically addresses the theme of urban resilience. The search process and the amount of time spent reading through many separate guidance documents could be viewed as excessive. Moreover, built environment professionals may not have the satisfaction that they have found all the information that is available. This tool aims to address this gap, and brings many existing planning and design guidelines together, situating their use within a wider resilience context and promoting their use in an integrated manner.
2 Economic Evaluation Tool
The Economic Evaluation Tool, RESEC, was developed to support the assessment of economic impacts arising from natural and man-maid disasters in urban areas and the decision-making on protective, mitigation and adaptation measures with the aim to enhance the security and resilience. RESEC is a decision-support approach to be applied in the investment planning phase. It supports the decision-makers with their aim to make more transparent, systematic and reliable decisions by creating a common understanding of the decision alternatives and their possible consequences before the decision takes place.
Using any resource for the risk mitigation in urban areas means that the opportunity to use that same resource for something else is lost. Therefore, cost-effectiveness (or “value” for money spent) is of central concern in most cities. Economic evaluation is one of the tools available to help choose wisely from a range of alternatives and implement efficient resources.
RESEC targets decision makers and experts in designing, planning and management of urban areas and infrastructure. It can also be used for the purposes of insurance companies, private sector investors or international aid providers. The approach supports the aims of more transparent, systematic, and reliable decision making, creating a common understanding of the alternatives and their possible consequences before the decision takes place.
3. Security Supervision System integrating Crowd monitoring and Flow analysis
The Security Supervision System, a PSIM system (Physical Security Information Management), is a platform designed to integrate heterogeneous security devices and application in order to create a unique and integrated view of the monitored scenario. As part of the HARMONISE project two tools will be developed and integrated within the Security Supervision System – the crowd monitoring tool and the flow analysis tool (both outlined in the following sections).
The system is able to receive and correlate heterogeneous events from different security systems (new systems as well as legacy ones), while having a unique presentation and business logic, independent from the device, and guide the operator, through a workflow engine, to the resolution of any abnormal situations identified.
The Security Supervision System tool is a technological tool able to support site operation management of ordinary and extraordinary situations; in particular it gives a helpful contribution to detect possible critical situations and to react to them with the most appropriate response activity. Besides, it allows viewing live video streams to identify rapidly critical situations through a monitoring activity and to perform investigation activity consulting recordings for investigation purpose based on either detected events or free searches.Moreover the tool is also suitable for policy-decision makers from the local government (local authority officers, urbanism department, transport department, transport and mobility department) for the capacity of integrating different vertical sub-systems from the diverse domains of a city (mobility, security, territory,..) and the possibility to correlate and aggregate this heterogeneous information and present it at different level of details.
The Security Supervision System integrated tool presents some of the core capabilities useful to support:
• Town administrators and law enforcement agencies in their daily tasks in normal and critical situations of a city or a region;
• Security and safety management processes of a big event providing well-informed situational awareness and crisis management.
4. Multi-Building Integrator
The Multi-Building Integrator (MBI) is an automatic, location-based software service to share event notifications that are created in technical systems of nearby buildings (security/BMS systems) direct to other nearby buildings. Information about the situation can be also shown on public info screens. Unlike the existing tools, Multi-Building Integrator exchanges information automatically between local technical systems, reflecting IoT (Internet of Things) and M2M (Machine to Machine) paradigms.
In dense urban areas a problem or an event in one building may have significant impact on nearby buildings or even the whole area. When these events are detected by the local technical systems (e.g. security, safety, Building Management System) an alarm is generated in only one building, and it may also be passed on to a central alarm handling centre, by default these technical systems do not share information directly from system to system. Precious time in situations of risk and danger could be saved if there were new ways of handling the situation without waiting for human intervention.
The Multi-Building Integrator creates an automated mechanism to exchange real-time event information between technical systems in a location-based manner. The primary purpose of the Multi-Building Integrator is to receive already existing information from technical systems in buildings about events of risk/danger, and to distribute it to other nearby buildings, which might be influenced by the event. The added value is to enable automatic sharing of alarms and other events, direct from system to system, in a location-based manner. The tool helps avoiding delays in receiving the information and supports smart sharing on selected local media, e.g. info screens. The target group for the tool includes technical managers and BMS operators, for example.
5. Risk and Resilience Assessment Tool
The purpose of this tool is to quantify the risk and resilience level of an urban infrastructure or a group of infrastructures to blast events (terrorism) that are capable of causing catastrophic losses in fatalities, injuries, damage, or business interruption.
Thus, the tool prioritizes the relative risk among a group of buildings but it can also be used to develop building-specific risk information. As a blast or explosive threat is one of the most common types of terrorist attack, the development approach of this mentioned tool is focused mainly on explosive attacks, both internal and external to the critical infrastructure.
This tool provides a quick and simple way to obtain an initial risk and resilience assessment rating for large scale critical infrastructure exposed to hazards that result from explosions.
The tool is intended to be the first step in a tiered assessment process that includes successively more refined analyses when more detailed information is needed. The primary purpose of the tool is to prioritise the relative risk or resilience among a group of buildings in an estate or community. The results can also be used on a building-specific basis as a prioritisation tool for more detailed study, verification of results, and development of mitigation measures that will reduce the risk or resilience rating value to levels that are more acceptable to the building owner or other stakeholders. The tool is intended for use by both technical and stakeholder audiences.
The tool is an excel-based tool which can consider internal blast, external blast and external nearby target infrastructure blast. The algorithms use information of the building interior, exterior and public areas obtained from its inspection, documentation or involved people knowledge.
The features of a building that are evaluated are physical components, functions or operations that relates to consequences, attractiveness or vulnerability. These characteristics are already display and scored for the user. Thus, the user just evaluates each feature by selecting between some given options. The building features with heavily weighted scoring require more careful consideration than the others.
The tool calculates automatically the Risk and Resilience Scores based on mathematical algorithms and weight factors.
Scores are classified into low, moderate or high risk. Buildings identified as high risk or low resilience should receive the highest priority for further evaluation. The specific cut-off can be modified on the priorities of the stakeholders.
6. Human Damage Mapping Methodologies
The purpose of this tool is to determine a probabilistic damage mapping of people populating an urban area in which a blast attack (terrorism) occurs. The objective is to include not only the maximum possible impact of an accident but also the maximum probable impact. As a blast or explosive threat is one of the most common types of terrorist attack, the development approach of this mentioned methodology is focused mainly on explosive attacks.
The tool is an excel-based tool but the obtained results are fundamentally based on advanced numerical model analyses. Thus, the algorithms for obtaining the degree of damage that will suffer the exposed population at a specific position are embedded in the excel-based tool and results will be provided as a function of pressure – impulse maps as well as human damage maps.
These numerical models solve the underlying equations describing the behaviour of gases, combustibles and solids and allow obtaining the key parameters (peak pressure and specific impulse) for each spatial position in the 3D scenario. The pressures and impulses obtained in the entire environment or scenario can be imported into the human mapping tool. Some of the needed inputs to generate the analysis scenario are: the geometry of the environment considered (mounds, buildings...) the location of the original explosion, the type of explosion...
Different levels of human damage are considered based on probabilistic methods: eardrum rupture, lung hemorrhage, death by impact... The most typical considered damage is lung damage because, as far as people mortality is concerned, this is the most critical organ in blast pressure injuries. The user may analyse the distribution of damage or injury to people depending on not only their position but also the existing influence of the building and urban layout on the blast wave evolution. In addition, the injury to each person can be presented graphically using a colour-coding scheme.
The list of the stakeholder addressed with this tool is listed below:
• Security services like Police department, Civil Protection department to prepared emergency protocols in singular and critical events in urban areas.
• Blast Engineers and Architect in singular projects to improve the level of security of their project in critical and vulnerable areas.
• Infrastructure operators for the assessment of the consequences in case of blast events and have objective information for invest prioritization.
• Insurance companies for the assessment of the risk and causes of an explosion event.
The added value of these tools together with the new Risk Assessment Tool can be summarised in the following points:
• Easy to use for no-expert key agent due to the clearly definition and identification of most relevant indicator for risk and resilience assessment.
• Resilience approach based on the definition and identification of indicators influencing the “ability to resist, absorb and recover from adversity” as well as the “ability to skillfully prepare for, respond to and manage a crisis situation”.
• Effective interaction between both tools for the sake of most effective and accurate risk assessment, critical zone definition.
This tool must be understood as a high level complement of the previous risk assessment tool commented. Thus, not only the level of risk and resilience could be analyzed in an urban scenario but also, more detailed information about what could be the human damage could be obtained based, not only, on the human physical capacities, but also taking into account the existing interaction among the threat definition, the urban layout and the infrastructure configuration (geometrical characteristics, orientation, location).
7. Workbook of Participatory Foresight in Urban Resilience
The aim of conducting a foresight processes is to become more aware of the future and at the same time actively influence it. The HARMONISE Workbook of Participatory Foresight (WPF) supports decision makers in illustrating the future city and its constraints. Scenarios help to outline potential challenges, changes, new actors, risks, and opportunities faced in creating a more resilient city. The participatory approach enables multi-disciplinary cooperation, and hence, creates commonly acceptable and more transparent results.
The workbook is directed to regional and local decision makers’ needs. Scenario building helps decision makers to understand how things interact and what their dependencies are. By using these scenarios one can explore what the future might look like and what are the needed or likely changes that can boost realisation of a preferred scenario. A well-crafted scenario allows an organisation to be more proactive, working together to strive towards a common goal.
Scenarios are closely related to all stages of the resilience cycle, helping to create a more resilient development that is strong and spirited to tackle various kinds of risks and also innovative and open to new opportunities and challenges. The relationship between the WPF and resilience cycle is exemplified in the following:
• Mitigation - scenarios can assist in recognising new techniques that can reduce the vulnerability of urban infrastructure, finding new ways to improve security and reduce uncertainty;
• Preparedness - participatory scenario building highlights the role and knowhow of citizens and strengthens co-operation between different stakeholders and interest groups;
• Response - scenarios turn the focus into the future by investigating, for example, the future needs for rescue centres, crew, and equipment.
• Recovery - scenarios help in envisioning a post-disaster situation, identifying the need and availability of skilled human resources for future needs.
8. Educational tool
The HARMONISE Educational Tool is a multimedia interface which allows a learner to investigate the urban resilience milieu in one’s own time in an easily digestible format. It is designed to interpret the HARMONISE holistic resilience message and to provide intuitive links to the HARMONISE platform and tools. The tool provides typical urban images at the centre of a dashboard type display. The dashboard has both input ‘sliders’ (such as risk, cost and aesthetic appearance) and risk type (natural or terrorism) and output indicators (such as safety, economic performance and ‘net cost’). The tool allows users to experiment between a sharp focus on initial cost and an emphasis on aesthetic design and enables users to see that significant trade – offs exist and that a balanced approach provides the best net cost compromise.
The tool has an obvious educational operating environment, as a ‘jumping off point’ for further study in the resilience field. It also has a possible ‘operational deployment’ role in locations experiencing resilience challenges of a complex nature and who are undertaking disruptive physical prevention and /or mitigation public works.
In many urban areas attempts have been made to interpret the rationale for resilience activities – such as disruptive flood defence works or vehicle restrictions, via signboards or other print based media. In such a scenario the HARMONISE Educational Tool could be tailored to utilise locally relevant material and images to promote the basic rationale for the scheme – without providing excessive technical information which (in the case of anti-terrorism schemes) could be put to malicious use.
The purpose of the tool is educational in nature: to foster understanding of the holistic resilience perspective; to raise awareness of the need to understand conflicts and associated trade-offs; to raise awareness of available tools and to promote an integrated, holistic approach to the business of urban resilience planning and design for large scale urban built infrastructure.
All technical disciplines may have something to learn from the tool – however it will mostly be useful in selling the Harmonise concept to these highly knowledgeable and skilled practitioners, who will then go on to utilise the more specific, technical functionality of the Platform, such as the augmented search functionality, or specific tools such as Crowd Monitoring or Workbook of Participatory Foresight in Urban Resilience.
The tool will have a more focussed and valuable role in interpreting the implications of decisions to non-technical stakeholders – such as politicians, concerned citizens and related special interest groupings, which may come to the fore in the process of delivering large urban projects. It may also have the ability to be tailored to the specific requirements of a location, showing various physical actions that are required, with related implications for individuals and businesses.
The Tool fosters understanding of the holistic resilience perspective; raises awareness of the need to understand conflicts and associated trade-offs; raises awareness of available tools and promotes an integrated, holistic approach to the business of urban resilience planning and design for large scale urban built infrastructure. The tool is intended to provide enhanced access to the HARMONISE platform and to provide an adequate holistic introduction to the general subject area and then link to such tools, which themselves can provide detailed coverage of their specific domain, but often without adequate holistic perspective.
Potential Impact:
HARMONISE has worked towards the following core objectives:
• Provide a holistic security and resilience concept for a combination of complex and dynamic urban systems(vis-a-vis the HARMONISE Interactive Semantic Intelligence Platform);
• Deliver supporting tools (hosted within the platform) for the design, planning and operation of large scale urban built infrastructure, tested/enhanced through quality case studies;
• Provide an integrated approach to sharing building infrastructure and security information (building operation systems traditionally work in isolation) including critical flows of materials/energy and sensor technologies etc, while recognising the important role of security culture and societal acceptance aspects;
• Advocate and promote a significant exploitation programme to capitalise on new market opportunities, enhancing the pool of European expertise and fully supported by a comprehensive education/training curriculum; and, ultimately,
• Improve the design of urban areas and systems, increasing their security against, and resilience to, new threats.
HARMONISE has the potential to contribute significantly to building up the necessary capabilities for safeguarding security within urban decision making processes by delivering the required technologies and holistic concept approach for knowledge growth in support of these capabilities.
Beneficiaries of the HARMONISE project include, though are not limited to:
• National and local government authorities who have formal responsibility for delivering safer, more resilient urban built infrastructure;
• Utility companies and other businesses that build, operate, maintain and use a vast range of public/private buildings and infrastructure;
• A range of manufacturing, construction, engineering, and design organisations that provide components and services during the planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance of urban built infrastructure; and,
• The social and business communities who depend on urban built infrastructure for important work, recreation and service functions essential to their daily lives.
In addition, HARMONISE has clear benefits for societal well-being in the creation of resilient urban built infrastructure combining enhanced security and sustainability attributes which can, if (re)designed appropriately, contribute to enhanced quality of life and a safer and more secure public realm for those living in, working in or visiting urban areas. HARMONISE can provide a framework for maximising the application of smart building technologies both at a European level and globally.
Furthermore, it will bring about positive economic impacts, through for instance, increased confidence in built assets and confidence that increased protection of critical lifelines will induce and also through the promotion of innovation and co-ordination amongst business with interests in security, resilience or other aspect of urban built infrastructure. The project has the potential to shape and enhance the effectiveness (and cost) of urban security measures and thus the (financial) viability
of integrated urban resilience strategies. Specifically, it could contribute to reducing the cost of resiliency measures currently deployed in the built environment. This may occur, for example, though the facilitation of better decision-making which will ensure measures can be deployed at the appropriate time within the building cycle, or through the integration of counter-terrorism measures with environmental building techniques - creating a dual-use, and hence a more cost-effective solution.
WP6 of HARMONISE addressed the following core objectives:
1) Dissemination of project and non-confidential results
2) Commercial exploitation of concept, platform and tools post project completion
3) Provision of interactive platform and pedagogic tool for enhancing urban resilience and security of urban areas
4) Development of CPD proposals for education/training purposes
Via completion of a wide range of dissemination activities and the completion of each of the demanding Deliverables, it can be demonstrated that substantial progress has been made, with the Objectives of the Work Package broadly being met and in places exceeded, such as in the academic dissemination area.
Activity includes the following:
1. Informal demonstration: The AESOP / ACSP Joint Congress takes place every five years and it is the meeting of the European based AESOP (The Association of European Schools of Planning) and the US based ACSP (The Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning). The Dublin Congress took place in University College Dublin from 15th-19th July 2013. The theme was ‘Planning for Resilient Cities and Regions’.
2. Paper delivered at the Association of American Geographers (AAG)– Tampa - The punitive praxis of military-carceral space design
3. Paper delivered at The German Council of Prevention is organising the congress since twenty years. It has regularly more than 2.000 attendees from all fields of prevention (police, criminologists but also experts in urban planning held in Frankfurt (Germany).
4. Paper delivered at the Base London Conference 2014
5. Paper presented: AESOP 2014 – University of Utrecht July 2014 Coaffee, J. and Clarke, J.R.L. (2014) “Planning for urban stress: the role of resilient design in emergency response and recovery.”
6. Paper delivered at Future Security, Berlin 2014.
7. ESC ANNUAL CONFERENCE “Criminology of Europe: Inspiration by Diversity” 10th to 13th September 2014, Prague The conference was an open space for an exchange of ideas and of research findings in all areas of the criminological research. Beside the traditional orientation on victimology, penology, sociology and criminal justice, the aim is to attract the scholars in psychology, addictology, policing etc. Comparative research studies played an essential role in this effort.
8. Paper presented at Resilience: Just do it?! Workshop - University of Groningen October 2014: Clarke, J.R.L. (2014) “Resilience, Maladaption and Abductive Thinking: emerging concepts for urban design and planning.”
9. Project displayed BESECURE Final Event, Belfast.
10. Oral presentation of the HARMONISE concept to Dublin stakeholders including Dublin City Council.
11. Paper presented Association of American Geographers (AAG)– Chicago April 2015 Coaffee, J. and Clarke, J.R.L. (2015) “Unpacking the urban resilience ‘turn’: from concepts to implementation.”
12. Presentation at the Artificial Intelligence and Applications Research Group in Ulster University
13. HARMONISE case study workshop in London (first testing session). The first test session of the HARMONISE platform and tools in the London case study area provided the opportunity to introduce the project more generally to urban planners working at Southwark Council.
14. Paper presented to a Smart Cities Conference in Delhi, India
15. HARMONISE introduction and workshop with BDP employees (Manchester) A session was organised in BDP’s Manchester Studio to introduce the HARMONISE platform and tools to urban planners, urban designers and landscape architects within BDP.
16. The ECTP-CEU (European Council of Town Planners) Biennial was held in Dublin on the 15th and 16th October 2015. The theme was ‘Technology in Planning Practice - Making Cities Work’
17. RSA Early Careers, Sheffield October 2016 Clarke, J.R.L. (2015) “Design, Governance and Maladaptation: Urban Planning and Design Challenges for Enhanced Resilience.”
18. Presentation at ESR Dublin – European Security Research: The Next Wave
19. Oral presentation of the HARMONISE concept, together with the platform and toolkit, to Dublin stakeholders including Dublin City Council.
20. HARMONISE case study workshop in London (second testing session). The second London test session was organised with employees of BDP (London) and LeighFisher to introduce HARMONISE and test the updated platform and tools.
21. The Finnish National Rescue Association SPEK. SPEK organised a seminar, where several research institutes presented current research activities relating to safety and security. The seminar was held in Helsinki (Finland).
22. Presentation at What is going on in safety and security research? National Seminar organised by The Finnish National Rescue Association SPEK
23. Presentation AT The German Research Foundation (DFG) organised in cooperation with the IREUS institute an expert workshop on the topic of “Integrated Research for Enhancing the Resilience of Critical Infrastructures through Strategic Assessments and Innovative Planning Approaches". The roundtable took place at the University of Stuttgart (Germany).
24. Presentation to Intelligent Safety and Security – National Seminar of Finland organised by Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. 130 attendees representing safety and security authorities from national and regional levels and municipalities.
25. Presentation to Association of American Geographers (AAG)– San Francisco - Infrastructure lifelines and the geo-politics of resilience
26. Presentation at International Studies Association, Toronto, Smart urban resilience and the ambiguous politics of precautionary governance
27. Presentation at American Real Estate Society Conference, 2016, Denver
28. Presentation to Urban Geography Research Group, Cardiff April 2016. Clarke, J.R.L. (2015) “Urban Design Challenges for Enhanced Resilience.”
29. Paper published: Coaffee, J. (2013a) Rescaling and Responsibilising the Politics of Urban Resilience: From National Security to Local Place-Making, Politics, 33:4, 240–252
30. Paper published: Coaffee, J. (2013b) From Securitisation to Integrated Place Making: Towards Next Generation Urban Resilience in Planning Practice, Planning Practice and Research, 28:3, 323-339
31. Paper submitted: “ Multi-View User Similarity Aggregation in Collaborative Filtering Recommender Systems: Application to the Urban Resilience Domain” was submitted to the Journal of Knowledge Based Systems
32. Paper published: Coaffee, J. and Clarke, J.R.L. (2015) “Viewpoint: On implementing Urban Resilience”, Town Planning Review, 86(2).
33. Paper presented: “A Collaborative Filtering Recommender System Model Using OWA and Uninorm Aggregation Operators” presented at the Intelligent Systems and Knowledge Engineering (ISKE). The conference was attended by 200 delegates with a focus on current practice, experience and promising new ideas in the broad area of intelligent systems and knowledge engineering
34. Chapter published: Clarke, J.R.L. (2016) “From Maladaption to Adaption: A Resilient Urban Planning Paradigm” In: Chandler, D. and Coaffee, J. ed(s). ‘Handbook of International Resilience.’ Routledge, in press.
35. Paper published: Coaffee, J., Clarke, J.R.L. and Davis, P. (2016) "A HARMONISE’d approach to building security-driven urban resilience: a call to arms", Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction, Vol. 21 Iss: 1.
36. Paper accepted: Coaffee, J. and Clarke, J.R.L. (2016) “Critical Infrastructure and the Politics of Resilience”. Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, Accepted for publication.
37. Book published: Coaffee, J. and Lee, P. (2016) Urban Resilience: planning for risk crisis and uncertainty, Palgrave Macmillan,
38. Conference paper: Doyle, A; Ehimen, E; Hynes, W; and Purcell, S.M (2016) ‘Operationalising Resilience within Planning Practice: Towards an Online Decision Support Model’ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF E-PLANNING RESEARCH – Annual Conference, Lisbon, Portugal. March 2016.
List of Websites:
www.harmonise.eu
