The Dewetra Platform: A Multi-perspective Architecture for Risk Management during Emergencies

Abstract

DEWETRA is a fully operational platform used by the Italian Civil Protection Department and designed by CIMA Research Foundation to support operational activities at national or international scale. The system is a web-GIS platform aimed to multi-risk mapping, forecasting and monitoring. Using the tools of the platform it is possible to aggregate data both in a temporal or spatial way and to build scenarios of risk and damage. Two case studies are presented: the synthetic design of a risk scenario for the catastrophic rainstorm occurred on October 25th, 2011 in the easternmost part of Liguria and north-western Tuscany, and the contribution to emergency management of Emilia Romagna 2012 Earthquake. The usefulness of the platform has been proved also with a very short-notice deployment due to sudden crisis in Pakistan and Japan, by instance, and with full implementations nowadays operational at Lebanese, Albanian and Bolivian national civil protection, in addition to Barbados and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), in the framework of the ERC Project (Enhancing Resilience to Reduce Vulnerability in the Caribbean). On March 25th, 2014 The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has signed a cooperation agreement with the Italian Civil Protection Department in order to install and deploy Dewetra in countries requesting it through WMO: so far, Philippines, Ecuador and Guyana have gone for it.