PHAROS Capabilities in a Multi-Hazard Scenario (D2.10)
This document provides a report of the work carried out in Task 2.5 Multi-Hazard Case Studies. Its goal is to describe additional hazards the system can be used for, to specify requirements of the selected additional hazards in terms of input data (in-situ sensors and Earth Observation - EO), algorithms, simulation/modelling demands and functionality, and finally to provide an overview of changes required to apply a PHAROS based system in the context of the selected additional hazards.
In order to achieve these goal, the status quo regarding multi-hazard capabilities, in terms of requirements on the user, system, technical and data level, has been compiled at the beginning of Task 2.5. As the past meetings with the PHAROS Advisory Board (AB) and End Users have been successful in collecting requirements and application scenarios beyond the wildfire hazard scope, this compilation provided a good starting point for the subsequent steps.
The term “multi-hazard” is widely used, but lacks a common definition. Therefore this term (and related terms) and its use has been analysed, resulting in a working definition to serve throughout this document, including an identification of different synergy levels from a system architecture/technical point of view.
A limited set of additional hazards has been identified, using different criteria in order to ensure that, even with this limited set, most of the multi-hazard features can be addressed in this document, including hazard interactions and cascading effects.
Starting from the major building blocks of the general PHAROS system architecture (in-situ and EO sensors, modelling and simulation, situation assessment and decision support, Service Platform, downstream technologies), it has been analysed how these could be extended in order to support multi-hazard application settings. Furthermore, and using these general options to extend PHAROS in various ways, specific multi-hazard extensions have been derived focussing on the selected additional hazard types.
A number of PHAROS work packages have contributed to this task by providing relevant documentation (Deliverables), namely WP2 (esp. Tasks 2.4 Overall System Architecture and 2.3 Requirements and System Engineering), WP3 (all Tasks, esp. Task 3.4 EO Data Access and Processing), WP4 and WP5.
Among the results generated during Task 2.5, a list of updated or new requirements (on the user, system, technical and data level) have been generated, which will be incorporated in the next issue of the Requirements and System Engineering deliverables (D2.7, due in M30).
No major issues have been encountered during the generation of this report. It is worth noting that, following a top-down approach to multi-hazard capabilities of PHAROS, the level of detail that can be reached within such a study remains limited, mostly due to the fact that framework conditions (like technical or organisational settings, specific stakeholder requirements, domain knowledge) need to be known for a more detailed analysis. Where applicable, areas and topics have been identified in this report where further research and analysis would contribute and complement the findings of this study.