DOCUMENT INFORMATION PAGE

CONTRACT NUMBER / 606888
PROJECT NAME / Rapid Analysis and Spatialisation of Risk
PROJECT ACRONYM / RASOR
DELIVERABLE NUMBER / D12.19
DELIEVERABLE NAME / RASOR Community of Practice – Inaugural Meeting Report
WORK PACKAGE NUMBER / 12
WORK PACKAGE NAME / Dissemination Activities
DEADLINE / Month 30
VERSION / 2.0
DISSEMINATION LEVEL / PP
NATURE / Report
LEAD BENEFICIARY / AG
AUTHOR / DATE OF PREPARATION / Meeting held May 2015
V1 report Ch. Maasburg / 25-05-2016
V2 report Andrew Eddy / 30-05-2016
REVIEWER / DATES OF REVISION / Christiane Maasburg v1 / 25-05-2016
Andrew Eddy v2 / 30-05-2016; 31-05-2016
SIGN-OFF FOR RELEASE / Roberto Rudari / 31-05-2016

Table of Contents

Purpose of the Document 4

Executive Summary 4

Workshop Report 4

Conclusions/Implications for RASOR 10

Abbreviations 10

Annex 1 – Agenda of the Community of Practice Inaugural Meeting 11

Annex 3 – List of participants 13

Purpose of the Document

The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of the RASOR Community of Practice Inaugural Meeting (RASOR Conference) held within the framework of UR2016 in Venice, Italy, in May 2016.

Executive Summary

The RASOR Community of Practice Inaugural Meeting was held on 17 May, 2016 in Mestre, Italy, bringing together about 50 people from user organizations and the RASOR partnership.

The RASOR Community of Practice meeting was both the “Final Conference” showcasing the results of the RASOR FP7 project and the inaugural face-to-face meeting of a dynamic group of users and practitioners who will maintain the RASOR platform over the coming months and years, develop it and serve as a resource basin for RASOR-based analysis in the coming years.

The meeting was extremely successful, with presentations form all case study areas, but also with presentations from “new users”, who were offered a chance to present on new uses outside the FP7 project, building on the results of the project. These new users are typical of users who can be the nucleus of the RASOR Phase 2. Some examples of new users were UNOSAT and the EC’s Joint Research Centre, who both prepared cases studies for the meeting.

Workshop Report

The RASOR Community of Practice Inaugural Meeting, held on May 17th, 2016, in Mestre, Italy brought together about 50 participants from disaster management agencies, including the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), UNOSAT, Ispra, the Italian Civil Protection Agency (DPC), the Centre National de l'Information Géo-Spatiale (CNIGS) de Haiïti, Airbus Defence & Space, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR)/World Bank, the Mexico City-based modeling firm ERN, PREDICT Services, Air Worldwide, NASA-JPL, the Global Earthquake Model (GEM), GNS Science New Zealand, the NOAH project (Philippines), the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure & Environment, the UK Research Council, the Indonesian National Disaster Management Authority (BNPB), the provincial Indonesian Disaster Management Agency (BPBD), the Unilever Indonesia Foundation, GeoAdaptive, as well as RASOR partners. The event aimed to bring together beta users and new users of the RASOR platform to share experiences on how the platform can be used free of charge by the global community for multi-hazard risk assessment and full-cycle risk management. It constituted the launch of a new community of practice aimed at sharing lessons learned and best practices in risk assessment.

After a short introductory movie visually presenting the RASOR project, Prof. de Bernardinis, President of Ispra and Head of the Copernicus User Forum, gave an introductory presentation on how RASOR could be used in the Copernicus context given that it was the best downstream service currently available. He has invited RASOR to present at the next Copernicus User Forum at the end of May.

Roberto Rudari (CIMA Foundation) and Andrew Eddy (Athena Global) presented the RASOR architecture, demonstrated key functionalities and talked about the purpose of the RASOR Community of Practice. The RASOR team during the FP7 project spent a lot of time talking to users to come up with a high level understanding of what RASOR is expected to achieve. Expert users can change the parameters, develop their own vulnerability library, integrate their own models and play with all the elements. RASOR is set up as a trade space. Non-expert users can visualize scenarios and estimate the risk for a given area. The TanDEM-X DEM is used for the calculations but it is not itself accessible to end-users. A mobile app was developed and made available to users. It will be tested in Malawi during the next round of Community-based mapping campaigns. French and Bahasa versions of the platform will be available in June and multiple versions of the platform in different languages are possible in RASOR Phase 2.

The Community of Practice is supposed to be a real forum to exchange on how the tool should be evolving, priorities, tips and best practices. It could also be a lobby group. Cooperation with InaSAFE, which works in similar ways but is a desktop platform, and has a very complementary community, is being discussed with the World Bank/GFDRR. RASOR can be a bridge to communicate complex high detail risk results to decision makers in a simple manner, whereas InaSAFE can serve as an offline tool to develop RASOR layers. InaSAFE provided several slides to be shown during the session, and RASOR provided slides for the InaSAFE session, to encourage cooperation between the platforms and their users.

The first block of user presentations was focused around flooding. Jude Similien from the Centre National d’Information GeoSpatiale (CNIGS) of Haiti explained why it is important for CNIGS to integrate RASOR as a decision support tool into their risk assessment process. CNIGS works with different ministries on droughts, landslides and flooding and uses in-situ and satellite data. However, the awareness of impacts is still low and CNIGS will continue to increase awareness with government ministries. A presentation of the RASOR tool is already planned. Jude is convinced that if decision makers see the value of the tool over the available areas they will work towards making it available over new areas as well. CNIGS asked for further training from the RASOR consortium.

Jasper Stam from Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, presented the environmental challenges the Netherlands face, how they are being addressed and how RASOR could be used operationally in the Netherlands. He presented a list of pros and cons of the platform with the challenges being the computing time, the naming and finding of files and the availability of high-level models and tools in the Netherlands. The most important assets of RASOR are the possibility to combine different scenarios in one image, the possibility of cascading risks and the easy way to add metadata. His suggestions included to allow the upload of operational forecasts and to add confidence or uncertainty information to each scenario.

Pak Bambang from the Province of Jakarta Disaster Management Agency (BPBD DKI Jakarta) presented the challenges Indonesia faces in terms of flooding and the how disaster management is organized in his country. He presented JakSAFE, a tool that is used for damage loss assessment. As a user he sees several strong points of RASOR as it being a free tool that is connected with familiar mapping applications (QGIS), that can import data from external GIS files and OSM and the possibility of printing an impact report. As challenges for using the tool he lists its complexity for beginners, the need for high-bandwith internet connection and the need for flood models and spatial data. He identified several key success factors for implementing RASOR in Indonesia: Detailed data, training of technical staff, commitment from the disaster management organizations, integration into already existing systems and continued R&D. He showed how RASOR was used in Jakarta to simulate a costal flood, with impact varying over time according to different subsidence rates.

Veronica Casartelli from DPC summarized this first round of presentations and initiated a discussion on RASOR and flooding. Roberto Rudari (CIMA) pointed out that the platforms serves as a link through its public interface. Joost Beckers made the point that operational forecasting is very different and runs 24/7. RASOR is only being asked to generate forecast when it is needed. He explained that it is easy to connect operational FEWS to RASOR.

The next two presentations covered Seismic and Cascading Risk. Veronica Casartelli and Daniela di Bucci from DPC talked about the 2012 Emilia earthquakes in the Po Plain showing cascading risk analysis with RASOR in a multi-hazard context. They explained how DPC has been involved from the beginning of the RASOR project with the definition of user needs, active participation and feedback in the User Workshop and the implementation of a case study. The case study looked at the interaction between the 2012 earthquake and its impact on the main levees of the Po River and potential flooding. Daniela di Bucci encouraged the RASOR team to keep improving the multi-hazard/multi-risk function of the platform including NATECH. She emphasized that it is important to avoid alerts based on a simplified approach. Given that there are several similar platforms available she suggested a comparison of results from different platforms.

The next presentation by Athanassios Ganas from the National Observatory of Athens in cooperation with Andreas Antonakos from the Greek Secretariat for Civil Protection talked about the Santorini case study. He simulated a M5.5 earthquake inside the caldera and walked the participants through the exercise, selecting first the exposure, then the hazard, and finally the vulnerability. The direct impact is shown in terms of physical damage, economic damage and population affected. Dr. Ganas compared the results from RASOR to the very similar results of a simulation done by a more detailed and more complex methodology. The fact that RASOR achieved comparable results is very encouraging, as it is easier to use and faster.

He stressed the importance of historical data and customization. Customization is important as users may want to upload infrastructure layers, which they do not want to share with others. Lauro Rossi from Acrotec replied that customization is possible. A user does not have to share input information but could share the results instead. He added that each user can modify the vulnerability curves. The nomenclature for the different elements is detailed in the Wikipages.

The presentations right after lunch focused on new geographies for the RASOR platform. Agus Wibowo from BNPB, the Federal Disaster Management Agency in Indonesia, talked about RASOR Risk Assessment in an Indonesian context. Indonesia already uses several tools for disaster risk assessment in particular InaRISK (under development), InaSAFE and InAWARE. However, RASOR could be used as a complementary tool of hazard impact determination and the results can be linked to InAWARE. He pointed out the InaSAFE is not always very exact and RASOR may provide a more accurate impact assessment, as well as providing multihazard assessment and more complex scenarios.

Dr. Mahar Lagmay from the NOAH project talked about disaster prevention and mitigation efforts in the Philippines. The NOAH project has contributed significantly to the drastic reduction of casualties during flood events. The most important steps are warning and response. Accurate maps are necessary to warn the population early enough and to tell them where to go. During the Haiyan storm people died in the evacuation centers because the maps were insufficient. Local knowledge is combined with technology to identify areas that are always safe. Dr. Lagmay is planning to use RASOR in the future to understand better how man people are affected by a disaster and how to plan better. He stated that the flood maps created by RASOR match the flood maps that have been generated by the NOAH project.

In response to a question about financing Dr. Lagmay explained that the NOAH project had presented a policy paper in 2010 stating that it is crucial for the President of the country to support the plan and he did and talked to all his friends. The project received funding of 6 m Pesos.

The next set of presentations on global users started with a presentation by Luca Vernaccini from the Joint Research Center. So far JRC uses GDACS for automatic disaster alerts to the humanitarian community. However, the system is based on empirical algorithms for impact estimates and therefore limited. Dr. Vernaccini pointed out that the more sophisticated approach of RASOR in the first hours of a disaster could complement the first analysis and greatly aid decision-making. He compared results from RASOR simulations for typhoon Haiyan and the earthquake in Ecuador with results obtained from GDACS to show that RASOR is quite accurate and can enhance JRC-DRM services in the fields of EWS and satellite-derived products. He suggested other possible applications of RASOR for Probabilistic Risk Assessment, real-time impact assessment for CR and integration with the JRC-DRM risk assessment global data.

After a short coffee break Luca Dell’Oro and Mauro Arcorace from UNOSAT talked about UNOSAT’s training and capacity development and its Flood Finder tool, a modeling tool linking meteorological, hydrological and inundation models to produce global early warnings and simulated flood scenarios for decision makers. They have simulated a flood impact assessment of the Ndjamena Chad Flood and see a very important contribution by RASOR to the quantification of physical damage and economic losses. UNOSAT would like to include RASOR in its training portfolio, and plans to use the tool in late 2016 and throughout 2017 for capacity building in Africa and Asia.

The next presentation was given by Oliver Lang from Airbus DS on the Global DEM in RASOR Phase 2. He presented the WorldDEM and the WorldDEM product line (WorldDEM, WorldDEM core, DSM and DTM) as well as its applications such as flood modeling, global sea-level rise and slope analysis. 85% of the DEM is already processed and will soon be available globally. Dr. Lang confirmed that the DEM is hydrologically correct. RASOR relies on the World DEM for topography on a global basis, when more detailed DEMs are not available.

John Schneider from the Global Earthquake Model presented on the great complementarity between GEM’s work and RASOR. He identified the following opportunities for collaboration: