D8.1 Minutes of Workshop 1 - PREDICT project · 2015. 12. 7. · PREDICT does not start from...

This project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no

FP7-SEC-2013-607697

PREPARING FOR THE DOMINO EFFECT IN CRISIS SITUATION

D8.1 Minutes of Workshop 1

Date: 23/10/2014 Document ID: PREDICT-20141023-D8-1

Revision: Final

Date: 23102014 Document ID: D8.1-20141023-WS1 Revision: FINAL

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DRAFT 17/10/2014 CEIS ALL

FINAL 23/10/2014 CEIS ALL

Project co-funded by the European Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme

(2007-2013)

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PP Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services)

RE Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services) ü

CO Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services)

DISCLAIMER “The contents of this document and the view expressed in the publication are the sole responsibility of the author and under no circumstances can be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union.”


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Minutes

Workshop 1:

Meeting location Paris, France

Place SIA Lab

Date of meeting 2 October 2014

Host CEIS

Contact details [email protected]

Type of meeting Workshop

Work package WP8


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................. 5

1. KEY FINDINGS: UNDERSTANDING OF CASCADING EFFECTS ..................................................................................... 5

2. KEY FINDINGS: DECISION SUPPORT TOOLS ........................................................................................................ 5

3. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE PREDICT PROJECT .............................................................................................. 6

II. PARTICIPANTS ........................................................................................................................................ 6

III. AGENDA ................................................................................................................................................ 7

IV. MINUTES ............................................................................................................................................... 7

1. WELCOME AND ROUNDTABLE ........................................................................................................................ 7

2. PRESENTATION OF THE PREDICT PROJECT ....................................................................................................... 8

3. INVOLVEMENT OF END-‐USERS IN THE PROJECT ................................................................................................... 8

4. THE CHALLENGES OF CASCADING EFFECTS FROM AN END-‐USER POINT OF VIEW .......................................................... 9

5. PRESENTATION OF THE FIRST RESULTS OF THE PROJECT ....................................................................................... 11

n PRESENTATION ............................................................................................................................................. 11

n DISCUSSIONS ................................................................................................................................................ 11

6. WHAT ARE DECISION SUPPORT TOOLS? ........................................................................................................... 12

n PRESENTATION ............................................................................................................................................. 12

n DISCUSSIONS ................................................................................................................................................ 12

7. UNDERSTANDING END-‐USER NEEDS ................................................................................................................ 13

8. DEBRIEFING OF GROUP SESSIONS AND DISCUSSION ............................................................................................ 13

n GROUP 1 ....................................................................................................................................................... 13

n GROUP 2 ....................................................................................................................................................... 14

n GROUP 3 ....................................................................................................................................................... 15

n GROUP 4 ....................................................................................................................................................... 16

9. CLOSING OF THE WORKSHOP ........................................................................................................................ 17


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MINUTES OF THE WORKSHOP

I. Executive summary

This document synthesises the exchanges held during the first end-user workshop of the PREDICT project. This workshop, organised by CEIS in the framework of WP8 “End-user network”, was held in Paris on 2 October 2014.

The aim of the workshop, “Crisis Management & resilience, operational needs & solutions to mitigate cascading effects”, was to introduce the PREDICT project to its community of end-users, to introduce and discuss the concept of cascading effects, to present the first results of the project, and to exchange with the participants through group sessions and questionnaires, in order to gather their inputs on decision support tools.

End-users showed a great interest in the workshop. 10 crisis management organisations stemming from 9 European countries and the European Commission attended the workshop. Two related FP7 projects were also represented. Finally, 6 partners of the PREDICT project were present (see list below for more detail on the participants).

1. Key findings: Understanding of cascading effects • Need for a common definition of cascading effects, a standardised approach of incidents,

levels of alerts etc. • “Interdependencies” is the key word to define cascading effects. • What needs to be taken into account is the negative effect of cascading effects: this can be

done by knowing interdependencies and by ensuring users are aware of them. An increased knowledge of interdependencies could indeed pave the way towards a better management of cascading effects. What matters is the interface management.

• All stakeholders need to work together and have a common taxonomy (for example, infrastructure operators need the expertise of crisis managers and civil protection agencies).

• Difficulty to translate experience and awareness of cascading effects into risk management plans. Managing the unknown is the challenge.

• The human factor is central in managing a crisis and should be taken into account when designing crisis management tools.

• Increased cross-border coordination is needed in Europe

2. Key findings: Decision support tools • Not all crisis management organisations have/use DSS tools • DSS need to be simple to use, the design of the interface is crucial • DSS should serve as a support to the user, not a decision tool • DSS should help giving a comprehensive mapping of the crisis and its actors • DSS could be useful to process large data sets, to run different scenarios, and to manage

resources


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• DSS could be developed so they can be plugged onto existing systems and use other communication channels (ex: mobile phones)

• DSS should be modular (level and type of user, stage of the crisis management cycle, type of threat etc.)

• Identified key criteria of the information in crisis situation: relevance, availability, exploitability

3. Recommendations for the PREDICT project • The PREDICT project should make a typology of threats • The PREDICT project should understand for whom its DSS will be designed (typology and

level of end-user)

II. Participants

Organisation Country Number of

representatives

Sail Labs Technology Austria 1

CEA France 4

Deutsch Bahn Germany 1

CEIS Belgium 3

Thales France 3

WONUC Spain Spain 2

ICPEM United Kingdom 1

Government Centre for Security Poland 2

ETH Zurich Switzerland 1

National Emergency Supply Agency Finland 2

Civil Contingencies Agency Sweden 1

European Center for Flood Risk Prevention France 1

UIC France 2

TU Berlin Germany 1

Agency of European Integration and Economic Development/Red Cross

Austria 1

European Commission, Protection and Crisis Management EU 1

TNO Netherlands 1

Fraunhofer Germany 1

Ministry of Interior, Crisis management and planning department France 1


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III. Agenda

The workshop was organised following different formats / sessions:

• General presentations by members of the consortium of the PREDICT project and the work undertaken in the first six months of the project, followed by a discussion in plenary session

• Presentation of the context of cascading effects from the point of view of an end-user • Understanding of end-users needs through discussions in small groups based on a

questionnaire distributed and filled in by the end-users. • Extensive time was allocated (breaks and group sessions) to enable the discussion between

the participants and the exchange of experiences and best practices.

Below is the detailed agenda of the workshop. The related presentations are attached to this document in one single Pdf file.

1. Welcome Coffee 2. General introduction and roundtable - CEIS (see presentation 1) 3. Presentation of the PREDICT project - CEA (see presentation 2) 4. Involvement of end-users in the project - CEIS (see presentation 3) 5. The challenges of cascading effects from an end-user point of view - UIC (see presentation 4) 6. Coffee break 7. Presentation of the first results of the project – CEA (see presentation 5) 8. Lunch break 9. What are decision support tools? – Thales (see presentation 6) 10. Understanding end-user needs (questionnaires, group sessions) 11. Coffee break 12. Debriefing of group sessions and discussion 13. Closing of the workshop

IV. Minutes

1. Welcome and roundtable CEIS introduced the programme of this one-day expert meeting. The objective of the workshop was:

-‐ To present the first results of the PREDICT project (Work Package 2 on Domain analysis and requirements)

-‐ To gather inputs from end-users on their understanding and field experience of cascading effects in crisis situation

-‐ To orient the future research of the PREDICT project based on these inputs

-‐ To initiate the construction of a broad network of end-users interested in the PREDICT project

The workshop was held under strict Chatham House rule and the representative from the consortium pointed out the important role of the informed consent form distributed to the participants.


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Following the introduction of the day, all participants were invited to introduce themselves and their organisations.

2. Presentation of the PREDICT project Dominique Sérafin (CEA), coordinator of the PREDICT project, gave a presentation of the PREDICT objectives highlighting the ambition, objectives and structure of the project. The different partners of the PREDICT consortium were also presented. D. Sérafin particularly emphasised the fact that PREDICT does not start from scratch and aims at building on the existing knowledge and practises of crisis management to better address the challenges posed by cascading effects.

CEIS reminded the participants that the PREDICT project is a research project funded under the FP7 programme by the European Commission. It started on 1 April 2014.

For more details, please refer to the presentation attached to this document. Information about the PREDICT project can also be found on the following website: www.predict-project.eu

3. Involvement of end-users in the project Ms Olivia Cahuzac (CEIS), WP8 “End-user network” leader, then explained the role of this work package to engage with a broad network of end-users throughout the course of the PREDICT project. She underlined the opportunity given to the partners by theses series of five end-user workshops, to better understand the actual needs of crisis managers and civil protection agencies. Indeed, these workshops aim at understanding how these professionals work and what they would expect from tools designed to facilitate their daily work. Thanks to the organisation of these five workshops, the PREDICT partners will be able to better take into account the needs and requirements of the end-user community, and thus deliver operational tools.

Ms. Cahuzac emphasized on the end-user focus of the project. Indeed, end-users are involved at different levels: three end-users are part of the consortium, external experts are gathered in an Advisory Board, three use-cases will be developed and tested with end-users and finally 5 workshops will be organised throughout the project with external end-users.

Finally, the three end-user organisations involved in PREDICT as partners were introduced by O. Cahuzac:

• Safety Region South Holland South (VRZHZ) is a public organisation founded by several Dutch municipalities and with important responsibilities in crisis management response and preparation but also in advising the local government in matters of pro-action and prevention.

• SYKE - a centre for environmental research and development which works under the Finnish Ministry of the Environment - is the Finnish competent governmental pollution response authority in charge of measures against pollution incidents and providing assistance in response to marine pollution caused by oil or other harmful substances.

• UIC- the worldwide international organisation of the railway sector - promotes rail transport at world level and meets the challenges of mobility and sustainable development.

Three scenarios have been developed hand-in-hand with these three end-users and will be used in test cases, to test the tools developed within the project.


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• Extended flooding in the Rhine-Maas delta region (with VRZHZ)1 • Coastal multi-risk crisis management (with SYKE)2 • Derailment of a fret train on the Dutch, German, Belgium border (with UIC)3

For more details, please refer to the presentation attached to this document.

4. The challenges of cascading effects from an end-user point of view José Pires - senior security expert at the International Union of Railways (UIC) - gave a presentation on the context of cascading effects from an end-user perspective. UIC is also one of the partners of the PREDICT project. The objective of this presentation was to give concrete examples of the possible impact and experience of cascading effects on the daily activity of a critical infrastructure - railway infrastructure in the case of UIC - and how cascading effects are integrated into the crisis management processes of this organisation.

J. Pires emphasised the fact that our modern societies work in such a way that everything works in relation to something else. In such a context, domino effects are not always negative and independencies are most of the time necessary. He used the metaphor of the domino game to reinforce the idea that domino or cascading effects are not negative per se. Domino is a strategy game and one must wonder what is the right move to win. However, the concerning part is when the dominos are all put all together and threaten to collapse. This is the part where we need to focus on: managing and controlling the negative domino effect.

Railways themselves are changing into businesses, and as such they are asked to look into their efficiency. It changes how risk planning is being done and how choices are made (for example in the construction of new structures).

Interdependencies and users' awareness of dependencies that may impact their activity are key elements to prevent cascading effects. Dependencies are not to be seen as a marriage. Different activities or businesses actually complement each other to reach an objective; they share resources and make compromises. This is what stakeholders are looking at in the railway development.

One needs to consider all the risks at stake. For example, geographical analysis needs to be included in the analysis when developing new railway infrastructures. No engineer is going to build a railway line in an area where he knows that the land can be flooded. But he needs to have this kind of information. However, this information doesn't come from the railway field but from another expertise. Infrastructure operators need to always have in mind the possible functional and spatial dependencies. These dependencies need to be taken into account because experience shows that things always go wrong.

1 For more information about upcoming workshops related to this case please contact : René Willems (TNO) - [email protected] 2 For more information about upcoming workshops related to this case please contact : Tuula Hakkarainen (VTT) - [email protected] 3 For more information about upcoming workshops related to this case please contact : Dominique Sérafin - [email protected]


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When an organisation develops a crisis management planning - often devised on an annual basis - it may not be prepared for the unknown. If a problem arises, management control must have been already designed to prevent all the possible steps of the cascading effect of the crisis. This monitoring and control activity can be partially or partly automatized. For example, the Portuguese Railway Infrastructure Manager Organisation has developed a management control system - with Thales - that is 100% automatic4. The system gives the Portuguese authorities seamless control of operations across the entire rail operations through video interfaces.

Railways’ core business is not law enforcement, civil protection, investigation etc. Railways companies and operators transport people and goods. In order to prevent or face events that may impact this activity, infrastructure operators also need the expertise of crisis managers, civil protection agencies etc. Increased cooperation would lead to a better management of cascading effects resulting from external or internal events that happen in the daily activity of this sector (natural phenomena, industrial incidents etc.).

Crisis management can be defined as the process implemented if something goes wrong and when deviation's correction is needed. Its objective is to put things back on the tracks. Response and preparedness mechanisms are at the core of the crisis management process and determine the resilience - i.e. the return to normal functioning state - of the system. Resilience has to be the highest possible. At UIC - and among its member organisations - crisis management is one of the things on top of the list of priorities, and always needs to be improved.

For infrastructure operators the ambition is to move into a concept - a model - that will help them to manage their interfaces. Indeed, it is the interface management that matters: operators have to make sure that the right interface is managed. The comprehensive railways protection (CRP) presented by the speaker offers a conceptual framework to integrate protection for railways, which encompass the security, the safety, the civil and environmental safety, and the civil defence and resilience of railway systems. It provides users with rules and procedures, contingency planning, emergency planning and recovery planning.

The different stakeholders involved in crisis planning and management also need to speak the same language. One critical point and difficult thing to do is to focus on coherence of roles and responsibilities and communications. Cascading effects cannot be managed alone but have to be managed in a collaborative way.

To conclude his presentation, J.Pires mentioned the UIC use-case to be organised in early November in the framework of the PREDICT project. The scenario of the use-case has been designed to simulate a fret railway incident between borders of Germany, Netherlands and Belgium. This use-case will consist of a tabletop crisis management exercise with representatives from the relevant organisations of these three countries.

For more information, please refer to the attached presentation.

4 For more information see https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/node/23071


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5. Presentation of the first results of the project

n Presentation

The presentation of WP2 pointed out the first results of this work package dedicated to "Domain analysis and Requirements". Partners involved in WP2 have so far performed a State-of-the-art survey of the modelling, simulation and analysis (MS&A) activities in cascade effect & resilience and global modelling. They have also defined criteria for security metrics based on the existing practices in crisis management.

M. Eid (CEA) emphasised the role of resilience modelling, simulation and analysis to understand cascading effects in the context of crisis management. The challenges of finding the appropriate security metrics was also underlined. In the next months, this WP will focus on developing the technical specifications of the PREDICT software and tools and their implementation.

For more information, please refer to the attached presentation. The presentation was followed by an exchange with the participants.

n Discussions

One of the participants shared his experience of cascading effects by putting forward the big difficulty for public authorities to translate their awareness of cascading effects into actual initiatives, particularly in their risk management activities. She said that the impact and consequences of cascading effects are taken into account when they produce scenario and risk planning/forecasting. To this end, local authorities & central agencies are integrated in this risk planning to multiply the perspectives. However, it is highly difficult to visualise and to show concretely this issue. They are fully aware of the criticality of addressing cascading effects but do not know how to picture the problem.

Following these comments, the question was raised whether it was possible to go beyond quantitative metrics to use qualitative assessment?

The audience agreed on the fact that resilience - although a major challenge - is a difficult concept to catch for end-users. One of the end-users gave the example of the railway sector where actors do measure everything in term of safety. In this sector, they enjoy huge data collection capacities that tell them what is at stake at the moment (suicide, derailment, etc.). These are the common indicators to make the risk analysis and management. And they have - in what is called the railway risk management system - structured risk management plans to confront these events. The participant also underlined the fact that all sectors use basically the same risk methodology, have common facts and figures, and the same way of thinking.

From the point of view of a railway end-users, what is concerning is when - under exceptional circumstances – one needs to move away from these plans which are known very well in terms of what to do and who to work with. The challenge with cascading effects is to manage the unknown, keep a clear idea of the responsibilities of each actor, and understand how to include these cascading effects in the broad management of the crisis (micro-management vs macro-management).

One of the members of the consortium gave the examples of floods in the Netherlands (in 1953) and of the Katrina hurricane (in 2005) to underline this issue of lack of lessons learned. These two events


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occurred in an interval of fifty years but had the same impact - in terms of casualties. For Katrina Hurricane, he suggested two reasons that explained the massive impact of this catastrophic event: the behaviour of the New Orleans' residents who were not likely to evacuate and the behaviour of the police forces who deserted the city in the days before the event. These two examples emphasised the importance of the human factor when managing crisis.

One of the end-user agreed on the fact that the man is in the middle when a crisis occurs and needs to be managed. He is not outside the system. In a nuclear plant for instance, an operator is a person with a professional engineering degree useful to operate a power plant. Should a problem arise however, this person is not always able to manage a crisis. There are differences across countries. In Europe for example, the operator must have the capacity to manage the crisis. In Fukushima, the operator did not know how to react, and the very poor risk management and risk planning measures worsened the consequences of the disaster.

One of the end-user argued that indeed Critical Infrastructure protection in Europe needs increased trans-border coordination. By giving the example of the room the meeting was taking place in, he pointed out the fact that it is important to conduct a systematic risk analysis of our environment as risk management stakeholders. As he walked in this building he made his risk management plan; he spotted one single point of exit. He was not briefed at the beginning of the workshop and he did not know who to follow and what to do should a fire start downstairs. We must integrate risk management in our daily activities.

Another example was given that underlined the importance of the human factor and perceptions: air companies have to adapt to their customer when giving the security speech before take off. If they want to be listened by frequent users and non-frequent users they must adapt. The human factor is everywhere: one can have the best technology; if one does not have the proper knowledge of it, the technology is useless.

6. What are decision support tools?

n Presentation

S. Fossier (Thales) gave a presentation that aimed at demystifying our vision of decision support systems (DSS). The objective of this presentation was to explain to the end-users what the PREDICT consortium understands by "delivering a decision support tool", which will be one of the main outcomes of the project. This presentation would then provide a common basis to the members of the consortium to discuss operational needs, requirements and expectations in terms of DSS with the invited end-users.

n Discussions

Following this presentation the audience entered into a fruitful discussion on the ease for risk management agents to access and use decision support tools, and more broadly crisis management support tools, in their daily work. The topic of the human-machine interface was suggested as of central importance for this. As one of the representative from Thales mentioned, the core of the DSS is not in the human-machine interface, which could be one of the elements to explain that DSS and related tools are not seen as user-friendly by end-users. One of the participants recognised the fact


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that what is technically difficult for an engineer would be surely very difficult to handle for end-users. According to him, something in the design of common HM interfaces is missing which people designing games are good at.

One of the end-user agreed on this: developers of DSS forget to include the key requirement that is to keep the tool as simple as possible in terms of usability. Within an organisation, when security managers are selling tools to their colleagues on the field, they have to keep in mind that the people using this tool do not have the time to understand it. It should be user-friendly.

Another end-user agreed on the fact that people use a system and are not experts. What they need is something facilitating their choices and decisions. They do not have the time, the capacity and the willingness to understand the system they are using.

However, as mentioned by one of the representatives from Thales, the problem is also to ensure trust in the tool. According to him, end-users are not willing to just click on a button but also to know what is behind the button they are about to press. One of the end-users replied that one trusts the GPS he has on its mobile phone on a daily basis. Without understanding the technical functioning of GPS system. Every day people use interface systems and trust them by principle. When you turn this into the professional field it is exactly the same.

Regarding the issue of trust in the tools used and in the data processed by decision supporting system, one of the participants pointed out that end-users have to be able to justify their decisions. This legal aspect has to be taken into account.

7. Understanding end-user needs During this session, the participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire individually (see Annex 1 for a synthesis of the answers). Then, they were split into four groups and asked to discuss the questionnaire and open the discussion on topics related to crisis management, tools and cascading effects.

8. Debriefing of group sessions and discussion Each group appointed a rapporteur who was charged to present the main points discussed within the previous sessions. Below is a synthesis of these presentations.

n Group 1

The aim of a DSS is to support the user. There can be different levels of autonomy of a system - just as there are different levels of delegation between people in an organisation - from referring to a manager for taking the decision to taking the decision without referring. Modelling all cascading effects is too large. The first question to be asked is: do we model what we know or what we expect? Modelling what we expect can be difficult because - even for experts -it can be very difficult and wide to think about the future of events. Perhaps we should start with what we know to model the experience of one user to train the future user and to gather lessons learnt. This would allow for the prediction of the kind of cascading effects we may have for a given crisis and help people and end-users with less experience.


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The effects of a given crisis can overwhelm the competences and resources of an organisation such as the decision can overwhelm the mandate of the organisation. Therefor the following issues should be addressed and discussed with external actors:

• No common definition of cascading effect, which is not a completely clear concept for now. • No standardised approach of incidents, levels of alert, taxonomy (cf. the work a European

research project already achieved on taxonomy5) • Some organisations don't want to communicate.

The quality and the trust of the sources is also a very important point. Sometimes, trustworthy and official organisations spread information that is incorrect (ex: Liberia Ministry of Health did not communicate on Ebola).

End-users organisations are managing these issues on a daily basis and are aware of these challenges. The rationale behind effective crisis management and behind these DSS is also based on the combination of knowledge - no one will put a newcomer in charge of crisis management - staff and organisation - the right people in the right places - and a well supported IT system that can help crisis managers to decide.

One challenge foreseen for academics is to develop a system that can interface with existing systems because end-users won’t put away a former system for the new one.

n Group 2

One of the key findings from G2 discussion is that: DSS is a support system, not a decision tool. The tool is not everything and there is a place for human being and human choice.

The end-users of this group are mostly working for organisations in charge of monitoring the situation and can be mobilized in the case of a crisis to advise operational services and to improve the exchange of information through platforms.

These end-users are in charge of all kinds of emergencies from terrorist attacks to flooding. Typology of threats might be something the project needs to work on and to structure in an actionable way. Indeed most of these threats are interlinked and for example flooding can lead to an epidemic. This is the core of cascading effects: one event can trigger another one.

'Interdependencies' is the key word to define cascading effects because the impact of a crisis is cross-sectorial. 'Cascading effects' is more representative that 'domino effects'.

Regarding crisis management strategies to face cascading effects, the members of this group pointed out the need for a system before the crisis to optimize the allocation of resources and during the crisis. But supporting tools should cover the whole crisis management cycle.

5 See for example FP7 project DISASTER


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Cascading effects could have a higher impact that what we imagine now. We often need to rely on our imagination to think about the worse scenario. We are missing the nature of cascading effects by underestimating the possible surprises.

The end-users of this group are not users of specific tools but emphasised the importance of sharing information, particularly beyond national borders.

Many existing risk metrics and risk mitigation matrix have already been developed for risk planning. They are DSS that have been validated with civil protection organisations.

The group also highlighted the power of smartphones and communication devices to provide information. In this regard, a decision support system should not function alone but also rely on phones and other communication channels.

DSS should also be adapted to the level and the nature of the end-users (operational, strategic, first responders etc.). It is therefor important to address the question of the typology of end-users: for whom a DSS is designed? The functionalities are different according to the type of end-users and the tools need to be adapted to the needs of the field.

The main limitations discussed were the communication uncertainties and the complexity to represent the demand in a user-friendly way.

n Group 3

Group 3 had a preliminary discussion on the meaning and the relevance of the concept of resilience in crisis management. The definition of resilience depends on who is asking the question. Resilience is primarily a psychological concept and what it basically means is that after dramatic event, it is the process of returning to the normal state. The concept has been translated at the society level and in the context of crisis management.

One of the end-user pointed out the importance of conceiving DSS as a two-way road before, during and after the crisis. This is particularly regarding communication and information strategies.

Another end-user shared his definition of 'crisis situation'. According to him there are three possible scenarios:

• An unpredictable event which is by definition very hard to predict • A predictable situation in which we know - and in a way we accept the risk - that our tools and

resources are not sufficient to face its effects • All other situations are not crisis situations and can be managed. That is basically the role of

the crisis management organisation to prepare, prevent and respond these situations.

He also distinguished three levels of decision and of support than can be provided:

• Operational • Strategic • Political (for decision-makers)


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Crisis management procedures also depend on the institutional structure and the organisational aspects. In some countries the procedures are centralised at the national level, in some other countries the decision is taken at the regional level.

Responsibility was also a theme debated within this group. The participants agreed on the fact that the highest the level of decision is, the most compressed - uneasy - the level of responsibility is. Decisions should be taken being well informed of the situation: decisions depend on the input data and the knowledge we have of the consequences.

With regard to information, data and access to data, the participants underlined that information is a challenge. But data is a challenge before the crisis: during the crisis, the information should already be available in order to support decision taking. Three key proprieties were identified to define information in crisis situation: relevance, availability and exploitability.

The theme of information and access to information is also very interlinked with the fact that crisis management deals with society. This should not be forgotten because the societal perception is very important. Along with this dimension, instantaneous and broad access to information poses several challenges to the crisis management authorities: they facilitate the spread of rumours that may affect the legitimacy of crisis management authorities and they create high level of expectation from the citizens because information goes very fast.

The discussion also shows that there is a kind of crisis management cycle made of pre/during/post crisis situations. This should be taken into account to develop effective DSS.

One of the participants suggested that tools already exist. Therefor, the possibility to run DSS on the current running system is key for their successful use. DSS also have to be user-friendly and issue-related.

In order to summarise the contribution from the participants on DSS, one of the member of the consortium added that we wouldn’t be able to build something global and universal. Effective tools have to be oriented towards certain threats or certain users, with certain kind of data. Having a modular DSS tool may be the solution (ex: applications on the iPhone). The real effort will be to make the tools smart, communicative and user-friendliness. It is necessary to have tools, but they will never take the decision. The decision-making process implies to take into account human and cultural factors, the broad scope of actors and various perspectives.

n Group 4

In the fourth group, the end-users in the group did not use specific technical and/or software tools but:

• Checklist (clear, short, focused information) • Giant matrix (that can be updated) with identified critical functions and the main nodes of

dependencies • Website with access to governmental plans

What is needed from the end-user perspective when a crisis arises is:

• To have a general idea of what is going on • To know who we need to talk to


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• To know how to communicate and to work collaboratively • To be able to map the situation • The information is around and accessible, but it is not always plugged in a system

Why would it be useful to have a tool?

• Processing large data sets • Systems at the local level, but not necessarily at the national one (mention of Dutch system -

LEMS) • Having a system running different scenarios to support decision-taking • We know what equipment we have in each area, but not if they are available. Same with staff

> resource management system • Some situations can be standardised: if you know how to solve your problem, maybe an

algorithm can help you solve it

Worries regarding the use of technical tools:

• What does happen if you rely too much on a tool and it fails? • Gathering and centralising information is great but what do you do with it after? • At what level should the tool focus? (decision-making, operational)

Other remarks and comments:

• We need to identify in the crisis management system where we could relieve humans with tools to help them making decisions more quickly

• To build a tool, we need to debrief after crises and see what went wrong, and how we can improve things

• Tool will never make the final decision, should be seen as a support • Cross border (interesting if we could model cascading effects over the border)

9. Closing of the workshop Olivia Cahuzac thanked all the participants for their active engagement in the workshop and closed the meeting.


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Annex 1 – Synthesis of questionnaires This questionnaire was filled in by end-users individually and discussed in small groups. The synthesis is based on 13 anonymous questionnaires collected at the end of the workshop.

--------------- 1. Is your organisation a crisis management organisation? If not what is your link to crisis

management?

The typology of participants having answered this question was the following

• 8 participants indicated they were part of crisis management organisations: their activities and level of actions are diverse. These activities ranged from crisis management support, organisation and planning - in cooperation with other actors (authorities, companies associations etc.) - to acting as the interface between crisis management & emergency management at the local, regional and central level, and to providing support to municipalities and local communities for planning flood crisis and post-crisis management.

• 4 participants were part of research and development centers or private SMEs which objectives are to research risk and risk governance ; to improve crisis management response through organisational/technological development and training ; to provide a framework/infrastructure for OSINT which can serve as a basis for crisis management

• Finally one participant represented a professional association with more than 400 members stemming from the end-user and academia communities.

2. Provide an idea about the size of your crisis management organization/unit? (staff, size of the covered geographical area…)

The participants were part of organisations having from 10 to 200.000 (National Red Cross) employees. However, the average answers were in the 20-50 number of staff range.

3. What kind of crises fall under your responsibility (floods, gas failures, terrorist attacks, epidemics)?

All the participants organisations’ cover a wide range of crises at the national, local or regional level: floods, gas failures, terrorist attacks, epidemics.

4. How would you define cascading effects?

The key words mentioned by the participants in their definitions of cascading effects are: process, interdependences, system, interface, disturbance, propagation, triggering, and consequences.

The list below presents some of these definitions:

• “Different actions affect the whole process” • “Step by step failure of performance by interdependent organisations” • “Ripples, sequences via interfaces between systems and components” • “When a disturbance on a critical function in the society will propagate to several other

functions in other sectors”


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• “When one event (generally negative) triggers other events” • “An event generates impacts. These impacts generate other impacts etc.” • “A chain of reactions initialized by one prior failure”

5. If relevant, how do you take into account cascading effects? Do you include cascading effects in your crisis management strategies, trainings etc.? • Before the crisis • During the crisis • After the crisis

From the majority of answers, it appears that cascading effects are taken into account in the management of a crisis.

These effects seem to be analysed mostly before the crisis.

For example, some organisations map dependencies before the crisis, enabling them to assess possible cascading effects during a crisis. This is usually done at the planning stage. Then during the crisis, the objective will be to contain these effects of these pre-identified dependencies.

Other organisations produce risk assessments (generally consisting of scenarios), that will serve as a basis for crisis management procedures.

The analysis of cascading effects serves also to map the various stakeholders involved in the management of a crisis, or to try to increase public awareness about the consequences of natural and man made disasters.

6. Can you give a simple example of cascading effects you have been / you could be confronted to?

The following examples of cascading effects dealt by the end-users participating in the workshop are:

• Failure in electricity distribution / Blackout • Terrorist attacks on public transportation • Drinking water contamination after a flood • Security problems for relief workers in West Africa during the Ebola crisis • Stop in the freight by airplanes due to the Island ash cloud in 2010 and 2011 • Failure of Internet connection blocking payments in shops • Metal theft on railway infrastructures • Floods risking a nuclear incident / Floods disturbing road and railway infrastructures

7. Do you know if your organisation has • An information system (If yes, which one?) • A decision support system (If yes, which one?) • Specific tools for crisis management (If yes, which one?)

Most organisations declared having an information system (Internet, central reporting system to support information flow

Four participants were not aware of any systems within their organisations, or did not answer this question.


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Several organisations mentioned the use of decision support systems and specific tools for Crisis management (risk assessment methodologies, crisis management plans and procedures etc.). However, it appears that these tools mainly consist of methodologies, plans and procedures rather than software tools (cf. Q12 below).

The ArcGIS tool was mentioned. One organization mentioned the use of a Media Mining system.

8. Are these tools used on the staff level (used by Headquarters) or in the field (used by first responders), or both?

Only half of the participants answered this question. All the organisations use these tools at the staff level (HQ).

9. If relevant, what specific tools are used in the field?

One example was given: a platform including cooperation creation of multi-media reports for mobile devices and collection of information via mobile-devices.

10. If relevant, what specific tools are used on the management level?

The mentioned tools or processes are the following:

• Multi agencies procedures • Reports for decision makers • Tools for global monitoring, assessing cascading effects and communication tools • Crisis management plans (procedures, security matrix indicating notes and responsibilities of

responsible entities) • GIS database (capabilities and resources) • Information gathering and distribution tools

11. Are you a direct user / beneficiary of these tools?

Out of the 13 questionnaires, the answers were the following:

• No: 1 • Direct user: 5 • Other: N/A (6); Developer of metrics (1)

12. If yes, how would you evaluate the ease of use of your decision support system? If no, why don’t you use these tools?

Because most of the participants do not use decision support tools, it was difficult to answer this question. However, one participant mentioned that procedures were changed after every crisis situation, while only one participant declared the tools were easy to use.

A participant declared that his organization was not using any tools, but that it would be an essential support to the analysis undertaken by the staff.

13. When do you consider it more relevant to have decision support tools: before the crisis, during or after?


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All in all, the participants though that decision support tools would be useful at all stages of a crisis, and especially during the crises.

Indeed, depending on the stage of the crisis, these tools will serve different purposes:

• Before: Planning the crisis; planning the recovery; identification of the investment needed in disaster prevention (allocation of human resources and equipment)

• During: crisis management, follow-up on progress made • After: Identify best practices, recovery management

One participant mentioned that if decision support tools are useful during the entire crisis, the implementation timeline was very different in the various stages and needed to be taken into account by the decision support tool.

14. If relevant, what confidence do you have in your decision support system? How often to you make your decision relying primarily on the proposed solutions of the tool?

Two answers were provided to this question:

• “Procedures describe what should be done and by whom, but decision makers may change it every time”

• “I have great confidence in them, but they never gave me the final answer and they should not do so”

15. If relevant, what are the three main limitations you have identified in your decision support tool?

The participants presented limitations related to the data, the procedures and the modeling.

As regards to the data, trust of information, multi-languages, lack of data and difficulties to identify and locate the data were mentioned as limitations in decision support tools.

The procedures are limited because of the responsibility of the decision makers at the national level.

Finally, one participant mentioned the complexity of modeling, the challenges to apply to specific sites and the fact that tools are usually tested only once with the end-users as limitations to develop accurate and operational decision support tools.

16. If relevant, what are the three main limitations you have identified in your use of the decision support tool (ex: availability of the tool in the organization, access to training etc.)?

The following limitations to the use of decision support tools were identified by the participants:

• Simplicity of use • Regular updates needed / need and relevant to inject new data • Access to training is limited / Tools are not always simple to use • Budget constraints • Legal aspects • Risk of leak of sensitive information


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17. What is for you the key challenge for decision support tools in your context?

The participants identified the following key challenges that should be taken into account by new decision support tools:

• Robustness • Reproducibility of results • Speed • Multi-linguality • Multi-media • Identification of the right level of detail • Giving a global view of the crisis management • Possibility to enter different inputs at different moments for the planning of the management of

the crisis • User friendly (interface, simplicity) • Provide a comprehensive answer (“all” the aspects of cascades should be considered) • Communicate on uncertainties • A reliable tool • Possible interaction with experts

18. Do you have any other inputs about your work/ your use of tools you would like to share with us?

Inputs from insurance companies who have detailed mathematical models to represent cascading effects could be interesting to look at.

Think about the potential of crowd sourcing certain tasks, and use the power of the crowd to gather and/or verify information.

Other projects are working on these issues, such as MATRIX and STREST.

The questionnaire could include additional questions or remarks such as:

• For whom is a DSS?

• Functionalities should be different according the type of end-users

• Adapt the tools according to the needs of the end-users in the field


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