VASA

“Web 2.0 und Social Media im Katastrophenschutz und Hochwassermanagement”

Julia Zisgen — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 10:13:53 +0000

After the floodings in Central Europe this summer many authorities and organizations realized that social media is playing a big role in emergency managment. Therefore a lively discussion has started to find out which technologies already exist and which of them are useful in preparation for and during a crisis.

One of these discussions lately took place in Heidelberg on October 17th, 2013. The department of geoinformatics of the University of Heidelberg together with the IT specialists of Leiner&Wolff had invited several experts in this field to talk about new develpoments regarding social media in civil protection and flood control. Many speakers also shared their experiences with the floodings this summer as well as with other events or presented their current research.

VASA was discussed in the presentation of two speakers from the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance who took it as an example of how to use big data and especially social media during a disaster. You can find the presentation here (in German).

The other presentations of the conference have been uploaded to this page (all in German).

Open Day at the AKNZ

Julia Zisgen — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 12:42:33 +0000

On September 14th, the Academy for Crisis Management, Emergency Planning and Civil Protection (AKNZ) invited everyone to their Open Day. The AKNZ belongs to the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) and celebrated the 60th anniversary of education in the field of civil protection this year.

The BBK offered a broad programme to show what the AKNZ is doing. As a part of this the research projects in which the BBK is a partner were presented as well. Central to the presentation of VASA was the tool for social media analysis which many visitors found fascinating.

CeBIT 2013

Julia Zisgen — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:15:35 +0000

Members of the consortium took part in this year’s CeBIT fair in Hannover (March 5th – 9th). The VASA project was also presented there.

VASA at the International High Level Expert Meeting “Extreme weather events and their consequences for civil protection”

Julia Zisgen — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:14:09 +0000

VASA was presented at an International High Level Expert Meeting regarding extreme weather events and their consequences for civil protection.

This conference was organized by the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance and took place in Bonn on the 22nd and 23rd of November, 2012. Participants came from Germany and the neighboring countries.

At a panel about future developments in situation awareness and visualisation VASA was presented and discussed as one possible solution for dealing with large and heterogenous data.

For more information, see this article (in German).

Deliverable D1.1-1

spretke — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:10:50 +0000

Content of Deliverable D1.1-1

Visual Analytics

Webmaster — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:25:07 +0000

Visual analytics provides technology that combines the strengths of human and electronic data processing. Visualization becomes the medium of a semi-automated analytical process, where human and machine cooperate using their respective distinct capabilities for the most effective results. The user has to be the ultimate authority in giving the direction of the analysis along his or her specific task. At the same time, the system has to provide effective means of interaction to concentrate on this specific task. On top of that, in many applications different people work along the path from data to decision. A visual representation will sketch this path and provide a reference for their collaboration across different tasks and abstraction levels.

The diversity of these tasks cannot be tackled with a single theory. Visual analytics research is highly interdisciplinary and combines various related research areas such as visualization, data analysis, data management, data fusion, statistics and cognition science (among others). One goal of this project is to demonstrate that joining research efforts from these various fields can lead to novel, highly effective analysis tools, contributing solutions to the information overload problem in many important domains. Because visual analytics is an integrating discipline, the existing solutions in the area of critical infrastructures and crisis response will be integrated to support decision making in situations where multiple critical infrastructures are relevant.

Critical Infrastructures

Webmaster — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:20:47 +0000

Critical infrastructures are complex socio-technical systems. Their components and sub-systems are characterized by specific behaviors which result from the applied rules of physics, from technical specifications, and the established control regime. The resulting behaviors tend to be quite complex under normal and under exceptional conditions. Dependencies between critical infrastructures result in more complex behavior, including cascading failures and nonlinear effects. This holds for dependencies within the same sector and across different sectors. Power grids, telecommunication networks, transportation, food, public health, and logistic systems are tightly connected – but managed largely independently from each other. Failures in one network can propagate within this network; for example, blackouts in power grids, traffic contingencies in telecommunication or logistic networks. More significantly, they can propagate to other critical infrastructures (CI) within the same domain (power blackouts) and to depending CIs in other sectors (power blackouts or telecommunication failures affecting all other CIs). Risk in one network directly influences risk in a depending one. Whereas information management and control within one critical infrastructure is well adapted to the needs of risk management within its own network there is currently no appropriate approach towards a holistic risk management taking risks from different critical infrastructures into account.

Things are already complex today – and they will get even more complex in the years to come. New technologies and system structures are evolving:

in the power sector regenerative and distributed energy production, large distances of power transport, power trading, smart metering and smart grids
in telecommunication networks an integration of telecommunication, Internet, and mobile networks
in logistics a significantly increased role of information and communication technologies
In food safety and protection, logistics management, efficient distribution and interconnected production networks, lead to consumer items with ingredients from dozens of countries that can travel from field to table in only a few days with interrelated dependencies on computer networks, transportation networks, logistics, energy, and finance.

Information and Communication Technologies

Webmaster — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:15:47 +0000

Even more than today, information and communication technologies (ICT) will form the information and control backbone of all critical infrastructures. This generates new opportunities for their effective and efficient management. But at the same time it generates new vulnerabilities. A loss of ICT functionality will severely influence the operation of critical infrastructures. Until recently, large critical infrastructures operated on their own, independent information and control infrastructures. In the future this will be possible only in rare exceptions (for instance, for the European transnational power grid). Most critical infrastructures will rely on external telecommunication networks not under their own control. This generates new dependencies which need adequate treatment.

Information Management

Webmaster — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:10:50 +0000

A key issue for the management and control of such large complex critical infrastructures with their manifold dependencies is information management. For information management within one critical infrastructure the currently existing approaches have to be extended and adapted to the new needs in future networks. The usage of external ICT networks and the growing complexity of information to be managed are the main points. Much more information from different sources has to be processed in much shorter time intervals. Equally important,information from depending critical infrastructures has to be provided and processed in a form enabling holistic risk estimation and management.

Management and control of large complex critical infrastructures are done today by highly skilled and trained experts with significant and indispensable support from sophisticated highly adapted ICT systems. These systems provide three main functionalities:

collection and processing of all incoming information from the own network and from related networks
analysis of information according to highly adapted, special purpose built-in procedures
presentation of information and results in an appropriate form to the human experts.

Information Modelling

Webmaster — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:05:00 +0000

A key issue for such an integrated approach is information modeling. Today’s simulation systems are based on special purpose data models based on the needs of the respective critical infrastructure. These models look different for power grids, for telecommunication systems, and for logistic simulators (and for other CIs). In order to manage and simulate dependent CIs an integrated model is needed allowing the integration of the different special purpose models. These integrated models have to be run on simulators which enable the simulation of complex system behaviors in dependent CIs. Different scenarios can be simulated as sequences of events and actions within one CI or crossing the borders between them.

Such federated simulations provide a new integrated component of visual analytics. Not just data but comprehensive simulations of complex system behaviors can be used as basis for complex but highly adapted analytical investigations and special purpose presentations to human decision makers. Novel visual analytics systems to be developed within the proposed collaboration will tightly integrate CI simulation and analysis with advanced visual interfaces to support effective decision making by the human.