Topic: SITGAP 2.0 – Comprehensive risk management system
Presenter: Massimiliano Cannata
Type: Oral
Several studies on climate changes have predicted an increase in high-intensity precipitations in Europe, which is likely increase the frequency and magnitude of natural hazards. Wherever is possible the more appropriate and desired risk management approach is a wise land use planning regulation in order to reduce as much as possible people and valuable objects exposition. Unfortunately, in most of the cases, people and developed areas are located in areas already threaten by different types of risks like, for example, flooding of nearby rivers, inundations from surrounding lakes or landslides from the nearby mountain slopes. In all these cases, where the relocation of people and economic activities is not applicable, an early warning system may support the risk reduction by means of timely intervention actions and emergency plan actuation.
Thanks to impressive technological advances the visionary concept of the Digital Earth (Gore 1992, 1998) is being realizing: geospatial coverages and monitoring systems data are increasingly available on the Web, and more importantly, in a standard format. As a result, today is possible to develop innovative decision support systems (Molinari et al. 2013) which mesh-up several information sources and offers special features for risk scenarios evaluation. In agreement with the exposed view, the authors have recently developed a new Web system whose design is based on the Service Oriented Architecture pattern. Open source software (e.g.: Geoserver, PostGIS, OpenLayers) has been used throughout the whole system and geospatial Open Standards (e.g.: SOS, WMS, WFS) are the pillars it rely on.
SITGAP 2.0, implemented in collaboration with the Civil protection of Locarno e Vallemaggia, combines a number of data sources such as the Federal Register of Buildings and Dwellings, the Cantonal Register of residents, the Cadastral Surveying, the Cantonal Hydro-meteorological monitoring observations, the Meteoswiss weather forecasts, and others. As a result of this orchestration of data, SITGAP 2.0 serves features that allows, for example, to be informed on active alarms, to visualize lake level forecasts and associated flooding areas, to evaluate and map exposed elements and people, to plan and manage evacuation by searching for people living in particular areas or buildings, by registering evacuation actions and by searching for evacuated people.
System architecture and functionalities, and consideration on the integration and accessibility of the beneath information provides interesting discussion points for the identification of current and future needs.
REFERENCES
Gore, A. 1992: Earth in the Balance. Boston, MA, Houghton Mifflin
Gore, A. 1998: The Digital Earth: Understanding our Planet in the 21st Century. WWW document, http://www.isde5.org/al_gore_speech.htm
Molinari, M.E., Cannata, M. & Meisina, C. 2013: r.massmov: an open-source landslide model for dynamic early warning systems. Natural Hazards. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1007/s11069-013-0867-8
