DIS-ALPDIS-ALPDisaster Information System of Alpine

Regions

DIS-ALP powered by Means of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)

General Information• Interreg IIIB Project; Duration: 3 years (2003-2006)• International as well as interdisciplinary project partners:

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

BMLFUW; Austria

Forestry Lead Partner; Support in methodological matters of project management and process documentation, information systems and set up of meta databases.

BMLFUW; Austria

Water Special matters of flood water documentation and flood water measurements.

Salzburg; Austria

Land use planning Integration and management of matters of land-use planning and natural hazards.

Bavaria; Germany

Flood-water proofing Archiveof data.

Provinz Bozen; Italy

Torrent- and avalanche control

Development of new tools.

Provinz Trento; Italy

Torrent- and avalanche control

Development of new tools. Transnational co-operation in terms of flood water.

Switzerland BUWAL Methodological matters and training. Slovenia Torrent- and avalanche

control Instruction.

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

General Information• Concentration of DIS-ALP is on information gaps and

communication problems between different institutions within the documentation of disaster events.

Emphasis was thus laid on:– Unified methodology– Providing meta-information for databases – Considerations about new and existing tools– Instructions and tutorials– Implementation

ObjectivesDIS-ALP helps to improve the documentation process of natural hazards by sharing bilateral knowledge in order to achieve interdisciplinary results in following domains:

• Near-term: An intensive transnational information exchange by experts of different working fields was set-up (practitioners of spatial planning, risk prevention, civil protection, water – and torrent management, forestry and information technology). Results are specifications for record documents regarding to natural hazards.

• Middle-term: A public information-platform about natural hazards has been developed as portal. In the future it will bridge information gaps between practical users, concerned people and official planning institutions.

• Long-term: Standardisation and homogenisation of natural hazard documentations for the whole alpine space will result in better comparable information basis and provide means for improved disaster management.

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

Method of Resolution

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

WP System Development

Knowledge-Database

Thesaurus

WPMethodology

WPInstructions

WPTools

WPImplementation

Thesaurus-Development

Thesaurus-input:-content wise knowledge-technical knowledge

Thesaurus-input:- course materials- action guidance

DIS-ALPPlatform

practical and organizational tests:- knowledge use- new Tools-historical events

Web-Service

Metadata-connection

System integration

WP Methodology

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

Concentrated on the methodology of systematic documentation and storage of data, which is important to make resulting data comparable and usable over longer period of time. The cornerstones of a documentation structure were before not organised in an uniform way:

spatial level of detail“WHERE DO I LOOK?”

thematically level of detail“WHAT HAS TO BE RECORDED?”

chronological level of detail“WHEN DO I LOOK?”

applied level of detail„WHO IS LOOKING?“

documentation level of detail

„HOW

TO BE RECO

RDED?“

WP MethodologyThe time between event and documentation is a substantial factor for the quality of the event data. Therefore the number of possible documenters has to be increased by the admission of new work areas, which improves "proximity" to the processes and thus the quality of the data however.

Consideration of interdisciplinary needs in the working-fields like spatial planning, watershed management, avalanche and torrent control.

Guideline of a multilingual uniform documentation system, including phenomena catalogue and providing common interfaces between local event databases.

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

WP MethodologyOpen standards were defined, including definitions of hazardous processes and collecting phenomena, which can be identified immediately after disasters. To implement these data in a cartographic environment, a clear definition of features was determined as well as a generalized legend.

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

One important task of this WP is to adapt the results of DOMODIS project to practical requirements.Source: BUWAL 2000

Source: BUWAL 2000

WP System Development

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

Common information platform – based on GIS and the existing national and regional information sources as web-portal.

WWW.DIS-ALP.ORG

All resultsAll papersLink to portal

WP System DevelopmentDevelop standards and terminology as ontology (which is queryable as a free knowledge servie and functioning as translation module).

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

A meta database on existing information, allows to serve as a single entry point to a wide range of information sources.

Information provision for different user groups, including the broad public for the improvement of risk awareness and risk estimation.

WP System Development

DIS-ALP event information portal:

-uses open standards

-Integrates existing data services without duplicating data

-Provides interface for knowledge base

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

WP Tools

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

New tools were tested to support the field documentation process and make it more efficient, thus increasing the possible number of recorded events as well as the quality of recording.

The resulting tools for surveying are able to combine traditional techniques with up-to-date technologies (e.g. GPS, mobile GIS and GPRS). Laser-scanner surveys can be carried out in the cases of events of particular severity, in order to detect possible variations in the topography due to erosion and deposition phenomena.

Source: Trento, Progress Report,2004

WP Instructions

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

Persons involved in event documentation must carefully be instructed. A new field-guidebook for supporting event documentation praxis was developed:

- Make the recording persons aware of the importance of their documentation work.

- Ensure that when documenting all relevant data are collected in a standardized way and data fulfill the requirements of the end-user.

- Tutorials can be used in instruction courses as well as directly in the field

- Instruction workshops were organised to check practicability of instruction materials

WP Implementation

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

In implementation work-package regional test beds for the defined methodology and the tools and systems developed were defined. It was used for evaluation of procedures and feed-back to other work-packages.

Results include event databases and GIS data from historical events archives in Bavaria, South Tyrol, Salzburg and documentations of recent events in the Tyrol.

Contact Points

• DIS-ALP produced formalised knowledge base on disaster events, related phenomena and documentation (ontology)

• DIS-ALP integrates experience of different institutions on best documentation practices.

• DIS-ALP provides technical and organisational knowledge for definition and improvement of disaster documentation

• DIS-ALP offers event database, integrated in GIS-based open web-portal

• Resuming information: www.dis-alp.org

DIS-ALP Disaster InformationSystem of Alpine Regions

Thank you for your attention!