The main objective of the workshop is to discuss the three sister projects: MEDiate, PARATUs and C2Impress. In particular, the main technical aspects of each project will be discussed in order to share opinions and activities. A technical representative from each project will then speak.

Programme of the Workshop

Carmine Galasso is “WP 3 Co-lead” in MEDiate will lead a talk about “Integrating dynamic multi-hazard vulnerability and resilience into formal people-centred and forward-looking risk assessment“.
He is “Professor of Catastrophe Risk Engineering, University College London (UCL), Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering.”
Short abstract of his talk: The world’s changing climate and rapidly evolving societies are exacerbating the risk posed by natural hazards to infrastructure and communities in general. The dynamic interdependencies of built and social systems and the potential hazard interactions amplified by climate change also add significant challenges to evaluating built-natural-social system resilience. Yet, there is a lack of tools available in the literature for comprehensively assessing (and supporting related decision-making on) the performance of the built environment under multi-hazard conditions, considering climate change impacts and the cascading effects caused by system interdependencies. MEDiate’s WP 3 aims to fill this gap by proposing a novel dynamic multi-hazard risk modelling framework to support decision-making under deep uncertainty, accounting for climate change effects in hazard interactions, cascading consequences of system disruptions, and the multidimensional impacts of natural-hazard-related disasters. The talk describes the MEDiate risk modelling framework’s main components and emphasises the key aspects to consider when implementing it in different settings. Overall, the proposed framework advances the state-of-the-art in multi-hazard risk and resilience assessment and climate-aware decision-making to support the development of robust mitigation plans and policies under different societal development scenarios.

Julie Dugdale from C2Impress will lead a talk from the title “ Agent-based model“.
Julie Dugdale is Full Professor of Computer Science at the University Grenoble Alps and a member of the Grenoble Informatics Lab (LIG), the largest Computer Science research lab in France. I am an ex-President of the ISCRAM (Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management) Association and I obtained the ISCRAM Distinguished Service Award in 2010. I am now an Honorary Member of ISCRAM. I am also the Vice-Chair of the IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) Work Group on Information Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction (WG5.15). I was a Full Adjunct Professor (20% post) at CIEM (Centre for Integrated Emergency Management) at the University of Agder in Norway.
Julie’s research concerns modelling aspects of human behaviour at the cognitive, work and societal levels using an agent-based approach. Broadly, her work falls into the domain of Agent-based Social Simulation (ABSS). Following her background in artificial intelligence, she is primarily interested in cognition and interaction. Specifically, modelling the cognitive activities of human behaviour, the cognitive supports in our work environment and how groups of people interact in order to accomplish a task.

Cen Van Westen from PARATUS, will lead a talk from the title “Impact chains“.
Dr. Cees van Westen graduated in 1988 for his MSc (doctoraal) in Physical Geography from the University of Amsterdam. After working with the University of Amsterdam for one year on landslide related problems in Austria and Switzerland, he joined the Division of Applied Geomorphology of ITC in 1988, and specialized in the use of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems for natural hazard and risk assessment. He obtained his PhD in Engineering Geology from the Technical University of Delft in 1993, with a research on Geographic Information Systems for Landslide Hazard Zonation. During his work at ITC he has been working in various positions. Starting as an AIO (PhD student), he changed to working as lecturer, and assistant professor before being appointed as associated professor in 2000. Dr. Van Westen has worked on research projects, training courses and consulting projects related to natural hazard and risk assessment in many different countries, such as Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, France, Georgia, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Nepal, China, Vietnam and Philippines. Since 2005 he is Director of the United Nations University – ITC School on Geoinformation for Disaster Risk Management.
Specialties: Use of spatial information for hazard and risk assessment, PhD supervision, consulting projects, education, development of GIS case studies, Research: PGIS for risk assessment, landslide hazard and risk assessment, multi-hazard risk assessment. Landslide research: generation of event-based landslide inventories using remote sensing (e.g. LiDAR, OOA), heuristic and statistical models for landslide susceptibility; dynamic modeling ; landslide run out, landslides risk assessment.