Document Type

Presentation

Publication Date

8-1-2014

Abstract

The flooding of the rivers Danube and Elbe caused: dozens of deaths; damaged bridges, streets, dams, railway lines and houses; outages of electrical power, drinking water supply, fixed and mobile telecommunication, water level gauges and purification plants; and crop shortfall. The analysis of the events and emergency response actions exposed flaws in preparedness and the understanding of emergency responders of the need to protect critical infrastructure. For instance, water level gauges failed, flood models for extreme amounts of water were flawed, emergency call numbers became unreachable and first responders could not communicate. As a consequence, protection and evacuation measures could not be planned properly, and the recovery and restoration process took long. The project "Critical Infrastructure Preparedness and Resiliance Research Network" develops a decision support system (DSS). Within this decision support critical infrastructure simulators are linked with simulators of external threats for critical infrastructure. Analysis tools supply real-time or near real-time data for consequence analysis for different courses of action. This provides the Emergency Manager with a comprehensive assessment of the behaviour of critical infrastructure under severe perturbations (produced by the loss of one or more elements in one or more Infrastructures). In the study area at the Rhine in the Dutch-German border area different dike rings with different safety levels are present. In case of high water, emergency managers have different options to manage the flood, for instance one dik ring can be flooded to prevent dike breaks further downstream. We show cascading effects of different flooding scenarios on power grids, telecommunications and drinking water infrastructure, logistics and transport.

Comments

Session R38, Decision Support and Information Systems for Flood Events

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