List and details on the Work Packages:

Work package 1: Management and Coordination of the Action

This specific Work package (WP) is designed for monitoring the progress of the project, from both the scientific and administrative point of view, during its different phases and at the end in order to obtain the expected results. The project, organised in work packages and actions, will be supervised by the FLORIS project coordinator (Prof Giuseppe T. Aronica, University of Messina) during all its length. He will be responsible for organising the work, bringing into action the partnership and the project resources following the detailed time schedule. Project management will ensure timely execution of the tasks and will guarantee that the project is fully focused on the problems that it was expected to tackle. The project Coordinator staff will also be responsible for the preparation both of the financial report and of the interim and final technical reports to be made from individual reports of each partner. The scientific activities will be structured in other 7 Working packages (WP), described in detail below. Each WP will have a WP Chair who will be responsible for: coordinating and managing the activities within the WP; representing the WP at progress meetings, coordinating and chairing the WP meetings and, generally, ensuring timely delivery of the highest quality outputs. A Steering Committee (SC) will review progress in all WPs and prioritize activities and recommend actions to deal effectively with obstacles and to ensure progress.

The SC will meet about every six months to discuss the activities performed in each period, analysing potential deviations occurred and taking decisions to correct effects of these deviations. In addition, these meetings will review the action plan for the coming months and agreed actions to be taken by each partner. It will be also reviewed the activities plan and it will be closed commitment regarding activities to be undertaken by the various partners in the coming months. During other periods of project, videoconferences for little project assessment will be done.

 A Kick-Off Meeting will be arranged in Messina (IT) at the beginning of the FLORIS Action activities, then the SC and WPs will meet periodically to assess the Action project. Two technical meetings and three project meetings will be organised allowing for all WPs to share and discuss results. As a result of each meeting, each WP Chair will be responsible for developing a minute to collect the details of the topics discussed and decisions taken.

These minutes will be sent to the SC and to the project coordinator within a maximum period of one month.

Additionally, an internal Technical report consisting of the project objectives, the actions for their achievement and short reports on the WP actions will be produced by each WP Chair together with the minutes and submitted to the project coordinator. Finally, an interim report at the end of the first year reporting the status of the work and a final report recording the results will be produced by the coordinator.

Consequently, the expected output of this WP are:

_ Kick-off meeting – Messina (IT) – Jan 2019

_ 1st Mid-Term workshop (Technical Meeting, SC Meeting) – London (UK) – June 2019

_ Annual partner Meeting (Project Meeting, Technical Meeting, SC Meeting) – Tirana (Albania) – Dec 2019

_ 2nd Mid-Term workshop (Project Meeting, SC Meeting) – Sarajevo (BiH) – June 2020

_ Final Meeting (Project Meeting, SC Meeting) – Berat (BiH) – November 2020

The expected deliverables of this WP are:

_ Minutes of meetings and workshops

_ Interim and Final reports

Work package 2: Simulation tools platform design

Main goal of this WP is to develop a user-friendly chain platform for the risk management where all necessary information related to a particular event, evaluated critical for Civil Protection activities, are collected and organised. The PRONEWS platform has to be able to analyse well defined event scenarios and their consequences on flood risk areas, appealing to the concept of resilience, identified as the capability of an critical structures to preserve its functionalities, after possible variations that can derive from that event, but also their integration at the prefectural or municipal Emergency Plan for the coordination and management of the event.

The identification of the urban infrastructures (such as bridges, roads, public transports, public buildings as hospitals, barracks, etc.), useful for Civil Protection activities during emergencies and liable to suffer the negative consequences of flood events and the integration of all this data inside the new platform, is a focus task to evaluate the resilience of the anthropic system and the coordination actions in the flood risk management. The analysis of these consequences cannot neglect the double role of such infrastructures, fundamental both for their structural resistance and for their connection role inside the road network.

Consequently, the analysis cannot be limited to the areas that could be directly threatened by the flood event. Given the complexity of urban contexts, the effects of these events can also involve areas not directly interested by the event. For instance, a damaged infrastructure, such as a bridge, represents a direct flood consequence. However, if that bridge is the only infrastructures that allow to reach a certain area of the city, then, even if that area is not directly interested by the flood, it may become more or less isolated. Consequently, in order to derive an appropriate “scenario map”, it is necessary to study the urban structure in its entirety, in order to cover with some indirect effects that could occur too.

Specific objectives of the WP are:

• Further development of the PRONEWS platform for monitoring and management of the flood risk, using the existing algorithms, input data’s of the procedure.

• Developing of innovative modelling for cascade effects and design the modelling chain incorporating the results of other WPs

• Developing of methodologies for implementation of Standard OPERATIONAL Procedures into the emergency planning and providing flood rescue training

Read the full report on this working package here.

Work package 3: Hazard Tool

As specified, the degree of criticality actually adopted in the Risk Management Plans, according to the Flood Directive, is referred to hazard scenarios associated to a frequency of different decades. In this approach, the definition of event scenarios associated to shorter time scales is missing: this aspect causes the carelessness of those events with a reduced time of occurrence for which Civil Protection actions is anyway needed.

The expected output of WP3 is a standard procedure for the identification of the events scenarios for Civil Protection action. Even if flood maps are not a specific output of FLORIS project, studying in which conditions the road network fails is a necessary input for crisis management. The hydrodynamic parameters for flood events with different return periods will be needed as input, such as infrastructures information as defined in WP1 final indications and Exposure and Physical Vulnerability data derived with WP3 activities.

Hazard maps and risk maps have been created in GIS using the ModelBuilder application. Namely, based on the “Methodology for the production of risk maps and flood hazard maps on watercourses of the first category in the FBiH”, a model was created in the ModelBuilder application, which provides individual thematic maps. The advantage of the model is the automation of the computation process and the significant acceleration of the entire map-making process. The schematic of the model is shown in the figure below.

Figure 1 – Schematic representation of models for creating hazard maps and risk maps

Read the full report on this working package here.

Work package 4: Physical vulnerability tool

The objectives of this WP are:

1- To define the discrete damage states to be studied for flooding with specific attention to the functionality and transitability of the potentially vulnerable infrastructures.

2- To define the benchmark characteristics of various classes of vulnerable infrastructures.

3- To derive scale vulnerability functions for the definition of infrastructures efficiency thresholds, both for population and Civil Protection rescuers usability

As a result, there are two key deliverables:

  • Classification of strategic infrastructures subjected to flooding
  • Derivation of infrastructures efficiency thresholds

The proposed methodology

Critical infrastructures are those essential networks for providing the basic needs and functioning of society both in normal situation and in case of disaster occurrence (Heileman, 2013; Wijngaarden, 2013). Disaster risk is said, often, to be a product of hazard and vulnerability (Wisner, 2004; UNISDR, 2004). Vulnerability assessment of critical infrastructures is of great importance since an outage of such facilities due to flooding may have a serious, long-term impact on the affected society.

Urban critical infrastructures mainly include:

  • Water & Sanitation (Reservoirs, Drainage Networks, Water Distribution Systems, etc.)
  • Communication Systems
  • Electricity Networks
  • Transport Infrastructures
  • Banking & Finance
  • Oil & Gas Supply
  • Emergency Services (Hospitals, Fire-fighting, Emergency Call Centers, etc.)

The flood vulnerability of all mentioned critical infrastructures is highly dependent on the level of vulnerability of their structural & non-structural Elements to flooding. On this basis, the methodology for reaching the goals and accomplishing the mentioned activities in WP4, is based on an indicator-driven development of synthetic vulnerability curve estimated for each structural and non-structural element of a certain infrastructure.

In many sources, vulnerability is defined as a function of susceptibility and exposure to disasters (herein, flooding) and at the same time, it is in an inverse ratio to resilience. Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) defines vulnerability as a function of exposure, sensitivity and coping capacity (IPCC, 2012). Coping capacity is extracted from the resilience concept, as some past studies have utilized resilience as a balancing factor to modify the obtained values for vulnerability (Karamouz et al., 2016).

As a result, it could be said that vulnerability has a direct relationship with exposure and susceptibility and an inverse ratio to resilience (Equation 1), which can be depicted as in the following figure:

Vulnerability = (Exposure xSusceptibility)/Resilience                                                 (1)

The next step would be gathering the experts’ ideas on the discrete damage to each structural / non-structural element of flooded infrastructures. For each vulnerability factor (i.e. susceptibility exposure and resilience), we can have several indicators (Figure 3). The indicators which best describe criticality of urban infrastructures mainly include: 1) the severity of impact (including number of fatalities or wounded as well as the resulting financial damage), and 2) the number of affected people faced by lack of services. Such indices can be used as the indicators describing CIs’ susceptibility to flooding. It should be mentioned that in this methodology, the term of “susceptibility” (or sensitivity) is the same as “damage” to the infrastructure since with a unique level of exposure to flooding, more sensitive elements receive more rate of damage. Exposure, on the other hand, can be expressed in terms of indicators according to the type of CI investigated.

Figure 2. Flood Vulnerability components

For instance, for hotspot buildings (such as health centers) the indicators may be the height of building, number of floors, construction materials, etc. For resilience, the rate of recovery from the outage seems to be a determinative factor and describe the level of criticality the best. This is while more indicators can still be considered depending on the certain CI investigated since the structural and non-structural constituent elements of each certain infrastructure are different from the others and their corresponding vulnerability / resilience indicators should be discussed separately.

Figure 3. Criticality indicators and sub-indicators for vulnerability elements

If having enough reliable data from the experiences, they can be used; otherwise, the information should be obtained by gathering the experts’ ideas based on their personal experience and professional knowledge I order to be able to estimate the discrete damage to and the level of exposure of each structural and non-structural element of the flooded CI.

On this basis, for different depths of flood water, the depth-damage curves and depth-exposure curves are developed for each single indicator and each single structural/non-structural element. Resilience can be expressed either as a discrete depth-resilience curve or as an index. In either case, this factor acts as a modulator for modification of the susceptibility and exposure curves (by dividing both susceptibility and exposure curves by resilience values).

At any case the related data are available, they can be directly utilized, or used for hydraulic modelling or other types of simulations instead of asking the experts’ ideas which are of more uncertainty comparing to using the measured data.

At last, a summation of estimated curves for the structural / non-structural elements of a certain CI develops the final Susceptibility (and Exposure) curves for the whole CI (Equations 2 and 3). An example of such integral damage curve has been presented in Figure 4. Then, Vulnerability curves can be calculated through multiplying the corresponding points of the two curves of susceptibility and exposure according to Eq. (4).

Figure 4. An example of damage curve obtained by the summation of discrete damage curves for each single non-structural element (Naso, 2016)

S (Depth-Damage curve for each modified CI’s element) = The CI’s Susceptibility Curve                   (2)

S (Depth-Exposure curve for each modified CI’s element) = The CI’s Exposure Curve          (3)

      Susceptibility Curve × Exposure Curve = Vulnerability Curve                            (4)

Alternatively, an exposure-susceptibility matrix can be developed as indicated in Figure 5, which includes some bands instead of the absolute values, which is applicable for covering the uncertainties associated with the vulnerability quantification.

In such a crisscross analysis, there is an estimated range of values for susceptibility and an estimated range for the exposure. Five different colors of the table cells represent various degrees of vulnerability from low severity to extreme level. For each CI or each single element of it with a specific value of exposure and susceptibility to flooding, the location of intersection point can be determined and therefore, the class of vulnerability for that certain element or infrastructure is obtained. This way, various infrastructures falling in one special band (with a specific color) have the same level of vulnerability to flooding.

Figure 5. Estimating the CI’s Vulnerability Class based on an Exposure-Susceptibility Matrix

What explained above, can be represented in the framework show in Figure 6.

On important point in the proposed methodology is that: there is a difference between general Damage Assessment and Vulnerability Assessment of critical infrastructures. General vulnerability assessment mostly has its focus on direct physical and economic damage, and partly on some indirect effects; this is while criticality assessment mainly deals with the indirect and secondary effects of the CI outage.

In fact, vulnerability assessment of critical infrastructures aims at, not only evaluating the direct effects, but also the Indirect and Domino consequences of a CI’s failure. Such a difference is because of the critical role of CIs for the society and their necessary services both in daily functioning of society and at the time of disaster occurrence. Direct damages to the CI itself are of minor importance compared to the indirect effects of its outage and lack of services to the affected community. In addition, the CIs’ functionality may have some direct and indirect effects on each other. Some past studies and experiences show that even not flooded CIs should be considered in flood analysis as their services may be indirectly impacted by the flood conditions. In figure 7, the impacts of some flooded infrastructures on the others has been shown through drawing some connections as an example.

Figure 6. The proposed framework for classifying the Most Vulnerable Urban Infrastructures to flooding

Maybe a certain CI is not flooded directly, but its functionality is disrupted because of failure of another infrastructure related to it. In this context, redundancy plays an important role in enhancing the CI resilience to flooding. An example of this could be a hospital which is not flooded itself (Exposure = 0), however, the road leading to the hospital has been inundated (Figure 8), which can affect the level of functionality of the hospital. For analyzing this, there is a damage curve for the flooded road, showing how much reduction in the road functionality has been undertaken, and accordingly, there could be a vulnerability curve for the hospital indicating how its functionality reduces as a consequence of road inundation and reduced functionality, even though the hospital itself has not been flooded. The reduction in hospital functionality may be in terms of delay in doctors and nurses trip to the hospital, difficulty in moving the patient to the hospital, etc.

Therefore, both direct damages to each infrastructure due to flooding and domino effects (i.e. cascade damage to the other infrastructures after one infrastructure being flooded) should better be considered in what WP4 is planning to deal with.

Figure 7. Critical Infrastructures: Relations and Consequences for Life and Environment (Deltares, n.d)
Figure 8. The impact of one infrastructure’ vulnerability on the other

Read the full reports on this working package here:

First part

Second part

Work package 5: Resources Vulnerability Tool

This work package is focused on the social and economic factors relevant for cascading effects recognition and quantification. The aim is to broaden and strengthen scenario development and in so doing improve management skills and capacities in the  recognition, evaluation and implementation of these factors in Civil Protection planning.

This aim can be further detailed into staged objectives for the tasks described:

1. Facilitate a collective understanding among emergency management teams in the cases of what is currently known, understood and implemented in management protocols.

2. Present to and discuss with the teams the established approaches available in the project team identifying opportunities and challenges to further develop their protocols.

3. Provide available information and new information required to enhance the developing scenarios.

Three key sources of information were explored for relevant Information and data:

  1. Local civil protection in each case area
  2. FLORIS project work package outputs
  3. Third-party data providers

     The first source involved engagement with local civil protection designed around local half-day workshops and training for both case areas. This was supplemented and supported throughout with sustained engagement with key local participants (Fig. 2).

Figure 2. Workshop staged approach

Read the full report on this working package here.

Work package 6: Pilot Sites Implementation

Work Package 6 provides the pilot case study location where working with the relevant professionals’ tools will be co-developed through the application of established approaches to the flood risk and associated physical, social and resource characteristics particular to its locations. The case studies are located in Albania and Bosnia-Herzogovina, as two of the principal beneficiaries of the project.

Read the full report on this working package here.

Work package 7: Platform testing and Validation

Objective of this work package is to test, validate and improve the developed procedure. Strictly connected to WP 2 and to the application of the procedure to the case study, this WP intend to control the procedure in its applicability and correctness, including its effectiveness and to indicate possible improvements through iterative circles. The outputs correctness and usability will be verified and corrections will be sent back to WP2 for a new iterative cycle until they will satisfy predefined standards.

Work package 8 : Dissemination and Training

This Work Package addresses all aspects connected to the knowledge management of the project. The dissemination activities will be undertaken with the objective to transfer the project results to the scientific community, to stakeholders and to a wider community of potential end-users not only in the project cases but the EU as well. Therefore, this task describes the tools that will be utilised to disseminate the project results and maximize the project impacts.

The objectives of this WP are:

_ Ensure achievement of all FLORIS expected impacts by designing and implementing dissemination measures;

_ Ensure training of personnel employed in the field of natural disasters, in Civil Protection Agencies and in other supporting public bodies;

_ Ensure efficient and effective use and transfer of FLORIS knowledge to the scientific community, stakeholders and potential end-users both within the case regions and wider EU countries

Key Policy Messages

  • Early assessment of the innovation gradient between source and recipient is essential to create local benefits with achievable goals and timelines.
  • The recipient organisation needs to be a project partner with established previous engagement with the local project partner.
  • The local partner engaging with the recipient organisation should have facilitation and training skills in the local language.
  • Not to underestimate the value of frequent in-person meetings, particularly early in the project, to build working relationships.
  • Not to underestimate the local project team’s required engagement and commitment with the recipient organisation throughout the project

Read the full report on this working package here.