Responding to Extreme Weather Events

Daniel Sempere-Torres is Professor at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. Anastasios Karakostas is Director at DRAXIS Environmental S.A. and former Senior Researcher at the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Thessaloniki, Greece. Claudio Rossi is Program Manager and Senior Researcher at LINKS Foundation, Turin, Italy. Philippe Quevauviller is Former Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium and Research Programming and Policy Officer at the European Commission.

List of Contributors xii

Series Preface xvi

1 The ANYWHERE Paradigm Shift in Responding to Weather and Climate Emergencies: Impact Forecasting, Dynamic Vulnerability and the Need for Citizen's Involvement 1
Daniel Sempere- Torres and Marc Berenguer

1.1 Disaster Risk Management in Times of Climate Change: The Need of a Proactive Approach 1

1.2 Adapting Risk Management to the 'New Normality': The Case of Flood Risk Management 2

1.3 Changing the Paradigm: Impact- Based Multi- Hazard Early Warning Systems to Move from Reactive to Pro- Active Emergency Response Strategies 4

1.3.1 From Reactive to Proactive Emergency Response Strategies 5

1.3.2 The ANYWHERE MH- IEWS 9

1.4 The New Paradigm: Dynamic Vulnerability 13

1.5 Future Work: From Multi- Hazards to Multi- Risk IEWS 16

Notes 17

References 18

2 Hydrometeorological Drought Forecasts: Lessons Learned from ANYWHERE and Next Steps to Improve Drought Management 23
Samuel J. Sutanto and Henny A.J. Van Lanen

2.1 Introduction 23

2.2 Method for Forecasting Hydrometeorological Droughts 25

2.2.1 The Climate (ECMWF SEAS5) and Hydrological (LISFLOOD) Models 25

2.2.2 The Drought Indices 26

2.2.3 The Drought Forecast Algorithms 28

2.3 Hydrometeorological Drought Forecasts 30

2.3.1 Meteorological Drought Forecasts 30

2.3.2 Hydrological Drought Forecasts 31

2.4 Drought Forecast Performance 33

2.4.1 The Origin of Seasonal Drought Forecast Skill 33

2.4.2 Examples of Assessment of Seasonal Drought Forecast Performance 34

2.5 Importance of Catchment Memory 38

2.6 Outlook and Future Improvements 40

2.6.1 Drought Impact Forecasts 41

2.6.2 Compound and Cascading (CC) Dry Hazards 43

References 44

3 Experiences and Lessons Learnt in Wildfire Management with PROPAGATOR, an Operational Cellular- Automata- Based Wildfire Simulator 49
Andrea Trucchia, Mirko D'Andrea, Francesco Baghino, Nicolò Perello, Nicola Rebora, and Paolo Fiorucci

3.1 Introduction 49

3.1.1 Mathematical Models for Wildfire Management 50

3.2 Synopsis of Propagator Development: More than a Decade of Wildfire Simulations 52

3.3 Propagator Model 55

3.4 Case Studies 62

3.4.1 Data Retrieval 62

3.5 Results and Discussion 65

3.5.1 Performance Indicators 65

3.5.2 Performances of Test Cases 70

3.5.3 An Example of Continuous Improvement and Operational Deployment: Implementation in Ireland 71

3.6 Conclusions 71

References 73

4 Building an Operational Decision Support System for Multiple Weather- Induced Health Hazards: ANYWHERE Developments and Future Applications 77
Claudia Di Napoli

4.1 Introduction 77

4.2 Heatwave Prediction in ANYWHERE 79

4.2.1 The Universal Thermal Climate Index 80

4.2.2 Forecasting Algorithms 80

4.2.3 Heatwave Products 81

4.2.4 Integration in the MH- EWS 81

4.2.5 Temperature Products 81

4.3 Air Pollution Prediction in ANYWHERE 83

4.3.1 Air Quality 83

4.3.2 Forecasting Algorithms 85

4.3.3 Air Quality Products 85

4.3.4 Integration in the MH- EWS 85

4.4 ANYWHERE MH- EWS in Action: The European 2017 Heatwave 86

4.5 Implementation at Pilot Sites 87

4.5.1 Integration of Local Heatwave and Air Pollution Products 90

4.5.2 Evaluation at Pilot Sites 92

4.6 Future Applications 93

4.6.1 Impact- Based Warnings 93

4.6.2 Multi- Hazard Forecasting 95

4.6.3 Cold Spells as a Health Hazard 97

4.6.4 Social Sensing 97

4.6.5 Protecting the Vulnerable 98

4.7 Conclusions 98

Funding 99

Acknowledgements 99

Notes 99

References 99

5 The EUMETNET OPERA Radar Network – European- Wide Precipitation Composites Supporting Rainfall- Induced Flash Flood Emergency Management 105
Shinju Park, Marc Berenguer, Daniel Sempere- Torres, and Annakaisa Von Lerber

5.1 Introduction 105

5.2 The EUMETNET OPERA Radar Precipitation Composites 106

5.3 Monitoring the Quality of the Opera Precipitation Composites 108

5.4 Application of Opera Precipitation Composites for Flash Flood Hazard Nowcasting 110

5.5 Conclusions and Outlook 113

References 116

6 Towards Impact- Based Communication During Climate Emergencies: A Community- Based Approach to Improve Flood Early Warning Systems 119
Erika Meléndez- Landaverde, Daniel Sempere- Torres, and Shinju Park

6.1 Introduction 119

6.2 Impact- Based Early Warning Systems (IB- EWS) for Actionable Decisions: Key Aspects 121

6.2.1 Partnerships for an Effective Co- Design IB- EWS 122

6.2.2 End Users: Identifying Needs for Emergency Response 123

6.2.3 Risk Identification and Impact Data Collection 124

6.2.4 Evaluation of IB- EWSs 125

6.3 The Next Step for Community- Based EWS: The Site- Specific EWS Framework (SS- EWS) 125

6.3.1 The Site- Specific Early Warning System Framework (SS- EWS) 126

6.4 The SS- EWS in Catalonia, NE Spain: Experiences and Lessons Learned 128

6.4.1 Community- Based Sessions in Terrassa: The Co- Design Process and Experiences 129

6.4.2 Community- Based Emergency Response: SS- EWS Real- Time Application in Terrassa 132

6.4.3 The Site- Specific Warnings (SSWs): Their Influence on the Risk Perception and Understanding of Users in Blanes 132

6.4.4 A4alerts: Mobile Application for Emergency Communication 134

6.5 An Outlook on Future Community and Impact- Based Communication Tools for Floods 135

Notes 137

References 137

7 Challenges for a Better Use of Crowdsourcing Information in Climate Emergency Situational Awareness and Early Warning Systems 141
Milan Kalas, Joy Ommer, Amin Shakya, Saša Vraníc, Denys Kolokol, and Tommaso Sabattini

7.1 Introduction 141

7.2 Crowd- Generated Content to Support Emergency Management and Early Warning 143

7.2.1 Examples of the Citizen Science in Disaster Risk Management 143

7.2.2 Tools 144

7.2.3 Challenges in the Integration and Application of Citizen- Generated Content in DRM 145

7.3 ANYWHERE Applications and Their Lessons Learnt 146

7.3.1 Crowd Mapping to Support Real- Time Risk Assessment 147

7.3.2 Social Media Streaming to Increase Emergency Situational Awareness 147

7.3.3 A Crowdsourcing Solution for Collecting Information on the Magnitude and Impact of Disasters 153

7.3.4 Towards a Holistic System 155

7.3.5 Facilitating Communication Between Actors in Emergency Management 157

7.4 Conclusion 158

Note 159

References 159

8 Co- Evaluation: How to Measure Achievements in Complex Co- Production Projects? ANYWHERE's Contribution to Enhance Emergency Management of Weather and Climate Events 163
Oliver Gebhardt and Christian Kuhlicke

8.1 Introduction 163

8.2 Application of the ANYWHERE Co- Evaluation Framework 165

8.2.1 Step 1: Context Analysis 166

8.2.2 Step 2: Description of Baseline Scenario and ANYWHERE Scenario 166

8.2.3 Step 3: Selection of Suitable and Feasible Criteria 166

8.2.4 Step 4: Selection of Appropriate Co- Evaluation Method 167

8.2.5 Step 5: Data Collection 167

8.2.6 Step 6: Data Aggregation and Analysis 168

8.3 Discussion of Co- Evaluation Results 168

8.4 Discussion 176

8.5 Conclusion 177

Notes 177

References 178

9 Using Artificial Intelligence to Manage Extreme Weather Events: The Impact of the beAWARE Solution 181
Anastasios Karakostas, Stefanos Vrochidis, and Ioannis Kompatsiaris

9.1 Introduction 181

9.2 Overall Objectives of the Project 182

9.3 The Impact of beAWARE 188

9.3.1 Scientific and Innovation Impact 188

9.3.2 Economic Impact 191

9.3.3 Safety Impact 191

9.3.4 Training Impact 191

9.3.5 Policymakers 193

9.3.6 First Responders 194

9.3.7 General Public (Citizens) 195

9.4 Conclusion 196

Acknowledgement 197

References 197

10 Innovative Visual Analysis Solutions to Support Disaster Management 199
Emmanouil Michail, Panagiotis Giannakeris, Ilias Koulalis, Stefanos Vrochidis, and Ioannis Kompatsiaris

10.1 Introduction 199

10.2 Related Work 200

10.3 Methodology 203

10.3.1 Disaster Detection 204

10.3.2 Object Detection 205

10.3.3 River Level Monitoring 206

10.3.4 Drone Analysis 206

10.3.5 Traffic Analysis and Management 209

10.4 System Evaluation 211

10.4.1 Disaster Detection 212

10.4.2 Object Detection and Tracking 213

10.4.3 River Level Monitoring 215

10.4.4 Drone Analysis 217

10.4.5 Traffic Analysis and Management 219

10.5 Conclusions 221

References 221

11 Social Media Monitoring for Disaster Management 224
Stelios Andreadis, Ilias Gialampoukidis, Stefanos Vrochidis, and Ioannis Kompatsiaris

11.1 Introduction 224

11.2 Social Media Analysis 225

11.2.1 Framework Overview 225

11.2.2 Data Collection from Twitter 226

11.2.3 Analysis of Social Media Data 227

11.2.4 Data Representation 232

11.3 Social Media Clustering 234

11.3.1 Evaluation of Spatial Clustering Techniques 234

11.3.2 The Proposed Spatiotemporal Clustering 236

11.4 Visualizations 237

11.4.1 Annotation Tool 237

11.4.2 Demonstration Tool 239

11.5 Conclusion 240

Notes 241

References 241

12 Human- Centred Public Warnings 243
Claudio Rossi and Antonella Frisiello

12.1 Introduction 243

12.2 Risk Communication 245

12.2.1 Risk Communication Key Aspects 246

12.2.2 United Nation Guidelines 249

12.3 Technical Standards and Recommendations 250

12.3.1 Standards and Requirements for Public Warning Systems Implementation 250

12.3.2 The Common Alerting Protocol 251

12.3.3 Recommended System Architecture 252

12.3.4 Use of Technical Standards 257

12.3.5 Media Adaptation and Usability of Alerts 260

12.4 Future Outlooks in Public Warning and Risk Communication 267

12.4.1 Crowdsourcing Approaches 267

12.4.2 Organizational Best Practices 269

Note 271

References 272

13 A DRM Solution for Professionals and Citizens 275
Claudio Rossi, Antonella Frisiello, Gianluca Marucco, and Marco Pini

13.1 A Novel Mobile Application for DRR 275

13.2 The I- REACT Co- Design Approach 276

13.2.1 The Co- Design Process in the I- REACT Project 277

13.2.2 From Data to Specifications: The Results of I- REACT Co- Design Activities 280

13.3 The Development and Implementation of the I- REACT Mobile Solution 285

13.4 Gamified Crowdsourcing for Disaster Risk Management 290

13.5 The I- REACT Wearable Solution for First Responders 293

13.5.1 Ad- hoc Positioning Wearable Device for Enhanced Localization 294

13.5.2 Operational Scenario 295

13.5.3 Device Operating Modes 297

13.5.4 Communication Flow 299

13.5.5 Wearable Device Implementation and Prototyping Cycles 299

13.5.6 Wearable Device Performance Validation 301

13.6 Improved Positioning of First Responders Using EGNSS Technologies 302

13.6.1 A Service- Oriented Cloud- Based Architecture for Mobile Geolocated Emergency Services (EGNOS in the Cloud) 304

13.6.2 EDAS Service Selector, Decoder and Storage 306

13.6.3 Augmented PVT and Integrity Computation 307

13.6.4 Implementation of the Architecture of the Cloud Software Module 308

13.6.5 Performance Evaluation of the Implementation 309

13.6.6 Positioning Integrity Computation for Consumer- Grade GNSS Receivers 313

References 323

14 Transforming Data Coming from Social Media Streams into Disaster- Related Information 326
Claudio Rossi, Edoardo Arnaudo, Dario Salza, Giacomo Blanco, and Lorenzo Bongiovanni

14.1 Introduction 326

14.2 Natural Language Processing Methods for Emergency- Related Text Processing 331

14.2.1 Document Representation 332

14.2.2 Document Classification 333

14.2.3 Named Entity Recognition 334

14.3 Model Architecture 335

14.4 Classification Results 336

14.4.1 Bag of Words with SVM 336

14.4.2 CNN with Multilingual Word Embeddings 337

14.4.3 CNN with XML- T Contextual Word Embeddings 338

14.5 Image Filtering and Classification for Contextual Awareness 339

14.5.1 Filtering Unwanted Images 339

14.5.2 Methodology for NSFW Classification 340

14.5.3 Classifying Relevant Images 341

14.5.4 Methodology for Image Classification 343

14.6 Event Detection 345

14.6.1 Related Work 346

14.6.2 Methodology 349

14.6.3 Evaluation of the Event Detection Pipeline 351

14.7 Impact Extraction 354

14.7.1 Related Work 354

14.7.2 Methodology 356

14.7.3 Aggregating the Information 357

14.7.4 Evaluation Results 358

14.8 Annex 1: Definition of Yara Rules for Impact Estimation 360

Funding 362

Notes 362

References 362

15 Conclusions and Perspectives 368
Philippe Quevauviller

15.1 Introduction 368

15.2 Policy Background 369

15.2.1 Civil Protection Policies 370

15.2.2 EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change 372

15.2.3 Water Framework and Marine Policies 373

15.2.4 Links with Projects Subject to this Book 374

15.3 Actor's Interactions and Community Building 375

15.3.1 Who are the Actors? 375

15.3.2 Community Building 377

15.4 Research Trends Related to Disaster Risks (Including Climate Extremes) in the Security Research Area 379

15.4.1 Societal Resilience 379

15.4.2 Tools for Integrated Risk Reduction for Extreme Climate Events 381

15.5 Conclusions, Gaps and Recommendations 383

Notes 384

References 384

Index 386