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Network
of Excellence
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CARiMan
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The
Internet Portal for Computer Aided Risk Management
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Introduction
Nowadays
the humankind must increasingly address serious problems connected to the
natural environment in order to enhance the quality of life, to save the natural
resources, and to reduce the social and economical impact of natural events.
Environmental issues are twofold: the
natural disasters pose hazards on the human life and activities, while environmental
pollution and ecosystem destruction endanger the natural resources.
Natural
disasters
(e.g., earthquakes,
floods, forest fires, volcanic
eruptions, landslides) may greatly affect the human beings and their goods
as well as the animals and the vegetal world, by endangering their life and by
damaging or destroying their habitat. These needs become higher where the
population is denser and where these phenomena are more intense or frequent
Natural
disasters, pose an ever-present challenge to public emergency services. In order
to cope with such disasters in a fast and highly coordinated manner, the optimal
provision of information concerning the situation is an essential pre-requisite.
Police, fire departments, and other organizations have to react not only
efficiently and individually, but also in a coordinated manner. This results in
the need of both intra and inter organization coordination at several hierarchy
levels. Since coordination requires current information, and such information
must be communicated upstream and downstream within and between organizations in
real-time, the need arises for an integrated communication and information
system for disaster management that provides efficient, reliable and secure
exchange and processing of relevant information (FOKUS).
CARiMan system will be capable to provide risk managers
and all related organizations with all the appropriate tools to react
immediately in a natural disaster event. In CARiMan project the implementation
of the CARiMan system in five natural disasters will be examined. The selected
natural disasters are:
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Fe: CARiMan in Fire emergencies
- Fl: CARiMan in Flood emergencies
- Ls:
CARiMan in Landslides Emergencies
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Ve: CARiMan in volcanic Environments
- Se: Seismik CARiMan
- En: Environmental CARiMan
- RE:
Risk Modelling of Renewable Energy Sources
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ME:
Risk evaluation in marine ecosystems
The ones that appear mostly in European level. There are
several other natural disasters (e.g. tsunamis, tornados, etc) that don’t
occur often in Europe thus we decided not to include them in CARiMan. However,
we believe that after the successful implementation of CARiMan in the selected
natural disasters, the governmental organizations of third countries (e.g. USA,
Australia) would like to fund the development of CARiMan for natural disasters
they face more often.
Human activities tend to endanger the natural resources by
producing environmental pollution and, consequently, by damaging and even
destroying the ecosystems. One of the main goals of modern society consists in
containing and, hopefully, stopping these degenerative processes. The efforts
oriented in this direction aim to define development models that account for the
co-evolutionary relationship between humans and environment. In particular, the
concept of sustainable progress is spreading; this is a model in which the human
progress (with fast dynamics) and the natural environment progress (with slow
dynamics) co-exist over a long-time scale. The
application of sustainable progress models cannot leave out of consideration the
fundamental activity of environmental
monitoring – JPA En. Only on the basis of the concrete results obtained
from this activity it is possible to undertake an informed discussion that
brings to operative decisions.
Increasing the contribution of renewable
electricity is a key part of the EU
strategy to tackle climate change. EU already has a significant target of
increasing generation from renewable energy sources. Renewable sources mainly
include small-scale hydro, on-shore and off-shore wind, solar, wave and tidal
flows, landfill and sewage gas. EU is encouraging these sources through new
legislation and financial incentives.
The manager of renewable sources has to deal with
several issues arising from uncertainties in production, market prices, and
technologies’ attributes, which need to be considered while making trading
decisions in order to maximise its profit from trading and at the same time
minimising its risk exposure to the market. Associated with this there are
concerns about how to characterise the risk associated with these issues and
co-operate it within a decision making process. Consideration of this risk is
vital for a successful renewable operation in an open trading environment. The JPA
Re addresses modelling of the risk associated with electricity production
and market participation of the renewable sources.