DEWS

New publication in The Open Environmental Engineering Journal

2012-06-05T12:43:05Z

Sometimes it takes a bit longer between initial submission and publication However, the article Towards an Integrated Information Logistics for Multi Hazard Early Warning Systems has been published in The Open Environmental Engineering Journal (ISSN 1874-8295 Volume 5, 2012).

The article is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License.

Journal Homepage | Link to Issue 5 (2012) | Direct link to article pdf

EGU 2012 poster presentation

2012-05-14T14:01:42Z

The topic "interlinking national early warning systems" was not only discussed at the ISCRAM in Vancouver (see previous blog entry), it was also presented at the EGU 2012 in Vienna.

Abstract | Poster

Interlinking tsunami early warning systems - publication in ISCRAM 2012 proceedings

2012-04-27T14:23:14Z

Our paper "Interlinking National Tsunami Early Warning Systems towards Ocean-Wide System-of-Systems Networks" was accepted as full paper at the ISCRAM 2012 conference. If the proceedings are online, a link to the paper will be added here.

Below the slides of the presentation which took place on Tuesday 2012-04-24:

ISCRAM 2012 #123

Moreover there was a demo session where the results of DEWS and TRIDEC were presented:

Join us at the EGU 2012 in Vienna or at ISCRAM 2012 in Vancouver

2012-04-17T09:40:20Z

If you are curious about the architecture of future tsunami early warning systems, then visit the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2012 in Vienna. An extra session full of interesting talks and posters is watiting for you:

NH5.7/ESSI1.7 - Architecture of Future Tsunami Warning Systems:

Oral Programme / Thu, 26 Apr, 08:30–10:00 / Room 1

Poster Programme / Attendance Thu, 26 Apr, 17:30–19:00 / Hall X/Y

Colleagues from GFZ, ATOS and University of Bologna will be present. Moreover representatives from OASIS and OGC will have talks within this session. More tsunami relevant sessions are listed here.

In the same week the 9th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management takes place in Vancouver [schedule-at-a-glance].

Track: Early Warning and Expert Systems for Disaster Management / Tue, 24 Apr, 14:30-16:00 / Strategy Room

Track: Poster/Demo Session / Tue, 24 Apr, 16:00-17:00 / Concourse Level

At this conference GFZ and of Fraunhofer IOSB - who are involved in the follow-up project TRIDEC - will be present.

New NHESS publication about the CCUI

2012-03-07T09:12:00Z

A new contribution in the Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) journal, which is is published by the Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), portrays the highlights of the graphical user interface CCUI. This component has been developed in the DEWS project and is now continuously improved in the TRIDEC project.

Title: User interface prototype for geospatial early warning systems – a tsunami showcase

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 12, 555-573, 2012
doi:10.5194/nhess-12-555-2012

Abstract: The command and control unit's graphical user interface (GUI) is a central part of early warning systems (EWS) for man-made and natural hazards. The GUI combines and concentrates the relevant information of the system and offers it to human operators. It has to support operators successfully performing their tasks in complex workflows. Most notably in critical situations when operators make important decisions in a limited amount of time, the command and control unit's GUI has to work reliably and stably, providing the relevant information and functionality with the required quality and in time.

Full Article (PDF, 5079 KB)

The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)

2011-12-08T14:49:12Z

Here are no news from DEWS but an informative video from the WMO explaining the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). Which is also used as central interchange format within DEWS, see Generic Information Logistics for Early Warning System (ISCRAM conference 2011).

CCUI test run at JRC European Crisis Management Laboratory

2012-06-13T09:27:14Z

In the context of the TRIDEC project the Command and Control User Interface (CCUI) was tested at the Joint Research Centre (JRC), located in Ispra (Italy), in the European Crisis Management Laboratory. It acts as a research, development and test facility for ICT focused solutions, integrating devices, applications, and crisis management related information sources to support crisis management needs such as threats analysis, common situation awareness, and collaborative decision making.

The JRC Crisis Management Laboratory is equipped with a 15m² large video wall and it was quite impressive to the CCUI running there.

The video wall at JRC. The right half is filled with the CCUI showing a tsunami scenario for the eastern Mediterranean area. This scenario has been developed in the context of the TRIDEC project. The left side of the video wall is filled with the Tsunami Analysis Tool (TAT), a product of JRC/CRITECH.

Close-up of the CCUI. The scenario shows an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.5 eastward of Crete. Below the video wall the Tsunami Alerting Device informs about a real 4.7 earthquake which occurred in the meantime.

A short sequence of the CCUI. It shows the classification of Turkish administrative units on the basis of wave propagation forecasts.

DEWS installation at BMKG in Jakarta, Indonesia

2011-10-21T07:57:01Z

Last week DEWS has been successfully installed at the Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi dan Geofisika (BMKG), the Indonesian tsunami early warning centre in Jakarta. A core-team of ATOS (project co-ordinator) and GFZ (technical co-ordinator) perpared the installation with a great support of local staff. On Tuesday, October 11, the offical handover took place. DEWS has been installed for evaluation and testing purposes in a closed and secure test environment, within the domain of Tsunami Crisis Centre and is solely used by its technical personnel. The deployed version of system corresponds to the DEWS National Centre (NC) version, being possible in the future to deploy the DEWS Wide Area Centre (WAC) version for international communication with other DEWS National Centres.

Drs. Suhardjono, Dipl. Seis., Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi dan Geofisika (BMKG) and Jose Maria Cavanillas, Atos Research & Innovation Director

The presentation included an outlook using DEWS technologies as Wide Area Centre. This system of systems approach based on standardized interfaces and warning products follows official IOC RTSP guidelines and uses official coastal forecast zones for ocean-wide tsunami prediction.

Large screen: DEWS Wide Area Centre (WAC) with ocean wide tsunami forecast using IOTWS coastal forecast zones. Small screen: DEWS national centre Indonesia temporarily (just for this presentation) connected to the WAC.

After the handover the team were invited to accompany the IOWAVE 11 on October 12 in parallel to the official exercise. Thus DEWS was exercised with a tsunami scenario close to Aceh and similar to the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 which earthquake parameters provided the base for the scenario used officially in the IOWAVE 11. DEWS not being an offical part of the IOWAVE 11 performed the scenario successfully and the team received the invitation and participation as great honour.
Finally we would like to thank the whole BMKG team who have supported the continued DEWS activities and who supported the installation and deployment professionally so that the ATOS and GFZ have been able to handover the system in time with the required quality.

Drs. Suhardjono discussing the WAC with a colleague.

Presentation at AGIT 2011 Conference in Salzburg (Austria)

2011-07-13T06:57:58Z

On the 23rd AGIT conference in Salzburg Matthias Lendholt (GFZ) presented the "WPS Application Profile Group for Geocodes". These services were developed within the DEWS context to access spatial data infrastructure (SDI) focussing on administrative units, their hierarchy and the mapping between geocodes and geometries.

Fore more impressions of the AGIT visit the AGIT facebook photo album.

DEWS @ research*eu results magazine (June 2011): "EU creates tsunami early warning system"

2011-06-30T16:33:30Z

"EU-funded researchers have helped develop an early warning system that will protect vulnerable communities from tsunamis and avoid future terrible losses of life such as that suffered in Indonesia and Sri Lanka in December 2004, and more recently in Japan."

read the article

research*eu results Issue 3 - June 2011
Languages: en (1,7 MB)

Publication: "Addressing administrative units in international tsunami early warning systems: shortcomings in international geocode standards"

2011-06-09T14:50:35Z

"Addressing administrative units in international tsunami early warning systems: shortcomings in international geocode standards", International Journal of Digital Earth, Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/17538947.2011.584574

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a938525913~frm=titlelink

Abstract:

Administrative units reflect the territorial hierarchies established within all countries of the world. The units are addressable with geocodes that provide a bijective mapping between territories and unique identification codes. Early warning systems for natural or man-made hazards often map affected or threatened areas to administrative units to establish a spatial reference that is comprehensible to all parts of the population. Addressing these territories in an international context has several requirements, such as worldwide coverage, completeness and topicality, which must be met by geocode standards. In this paper, the practicability and suitability of international geocode standards are examined in the context of the requirements of large-scale early warning systems. This paper exposes the insufficiencies and limitations of existing geocode standards International Organization for Standardization (ISO)-3166, Second Administrative Level Boundaries data set project (SALB) and Nomenclature of the Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) and emphasises the suitability of the non-official hierarchical administrative subdivision codes (HASC). The analysis is framed in the context of addressing affected areas for an Indian Ocean tsunami early warning system. This system was developed within the Distant Early Warning Systems project according to the requirements of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Intergovernmental Oceanic Commission for Regional Tsunami Watch Providers (RTWPs).

New book publication "Geoinformatics" with a reference to DEWS

2011-05-31T09:33:56Z

The new book Geoinformatics: Cyberinfrastructure for the Solid Earth Sciences will be published on 30th June. On page 329 the two projects DEWS and GITEWS are referenced in the context of the emergence of Sensor Web Eneablement (SWE) and conceptual models of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). This section is part of chapter 21 "Geoinformatics developments in Germany" which was written by Jens Klump, Joachim Wächter*, Peter Löwe*, Ralf Bill and Matthias Lendholt*.

* member of DEWS team

Press Conference at EGU General Assembly 2011

2011-04-08T13:04:00Z

As with previous years, selected sessions along with all press conferences (see the EGU General Assembly 2011 Official Blog and EGU Media Portal) have been live-streamed and recorded during the General Assembly 2011 and are also available on demand after the conference.

One of the notably press conferences took place on Thursday, April 7, 2011, with participation of two partners active in DEWS: Stefano Tinti and Joachim Wächter. The press conference "PC10 - Press Conference 10 Tsunami impact and Tsunami Early Warning Systems" (Stefano Tinti, Jörn Lauterjung, Joachim Wächter, Masahiro Yamamoto, Bruce Malamud) is available online at http://www.cntv.at/EGU2011/index.php?modid=18&a=show&pid=142.

Other interesting sessions are:

"US5 The 11 March 2011 Tohoku (Sendai) Earthquake and Tsunami" available at http://www.cntv.at/EGU2011/index.php?modid=18&a=show&pid=156, and

"PC9 - Press Conference 9 The 22 February 2011 Christchurch Earthquake" available at http://www.cntv.at/EGU2011/index.php?modid=18&a=show&pid=141

"The 2010 Haiti and Chile eartquakes and tsunami - What made the difference?" available at http://www.cntv.at/EGU2010/index.php?modid=18&a=show&pid=66 recorded last year at the EGU General Assembly 2010

Story of the month at CORDIS - EU creates tsunami early warning system

2011-03-25T12:10:36Z

EU-funded researchers have helped develop an early warning system that will protect vulnerable communities from tsunamis and avoid future terrible losses of life such as that suffered in Indonesia and Sri Lanka in December 2004, when an estimated 230,000 people were killed. EU support for the research came from the DEWS ('Distant early warning system') project, which received just over EUR 4 million from the 'Information society technologies' (IST) Thematic area of the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) to develop an advanced interoperable tsunami early warning system for strong early warning capacities.

When a 1,600-kilometre (km) segment of the Indian tectonic plate jolted downward off the coast of Indonesia 6 years ago, it provoked the second strongest earthquake ever measured (a magnitude of 9.2) and tsunami waves 30 metres high. The resulting devastation brought home the urgent need for a system to give populations at risk from a tsunami as much warning as possible.

Germany was the first to take action with a joint German-Indonesian tsunami detection and warning system (GITEWS). The EU decided to take this innovation further by funding and launching DEWS in 2007 to provide protection to all Indian Ocean nations.

'It's almost impossible to give numbers, but if DEWS had been in place in December 2004 a very large number of lives could have been saved,' said Andreas Küppers of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam, German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), the researcher in charge of DEWS.

The project is now being used to detect and analyse seismic events in the Indian Ocean, quickly assess their potential to unleash a tsunami, and warn at-risk countries through a network of detectors including broadband seismometers, land and ocean-surface based GPS instruments, tide gauges, and ocean bottom pressure control devices.

The data generated by these instruments is streamed via communication satellites to a central station in Jakarta, Indonesia for processing. SeisComP3 software, developed by the GFZ, rapidly determines the magnitude and location of a seismic event.

'The former systems needed 11 or 12 minutes to detect a signal and locate the source,' said Professor Küppers. 'The same can now be done in four minutes.'

Once the system detects an earthquake powerful enough to create a tsunami, it begins to analyse and model the risk of a tsunami. However, even with powerful computing capabilities, it would take too long to model a tsunami in real time. So DEWS researchers use libraries of temblors of different magnitudes and source locations, coupled with detailed simulations of the waves they would create along the Indian Ocean coastline, to determine which areas are at risk.

In addition to this time challenge, the DEWS team has also had to cope with the difficulties of having to warn 20 countries in a multitude of languages, many of whom do not see eye-to-eye politically. 'It is a multilingual system that can distribute different messages to different people in different languages,' Professor Küppers pointed out. 'It was even more difficult politically to get all the players together at one table, but we are well on our way to overcoming those problems as well.'

Researchers are now turning their attention to Europe and countries there at risk from tsunamis, namely those bordering the Mediterranean and the northeast Atlantic. They are even advocating the development of a new profession - that of the 'early warning engineer' - to offer maximum protection to vulnerable communities.

'If you want to tackle these problems properly, you have to take the time and effort to involve everybody,' said Professor Küppers. 'So we'd like to see people acquiring a new full-scale profession and be able to take care of the whole early warning field.'

>> Press release at CORDIS

Presentation at 76th OGC TC Meeting: "Usage of OASIS standards Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) and EDXL-DE in DEWS"

2011-03-29T10:48:14Z

The usage of OASIS standards CAP and EDXL-DE in DEWS were prestented to the Early Warning and Disaster Management (EDM) Domain Working Group (DWG) at the 76th OGC Technical Committee Meeting in Bonn, Germany.

http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1102tcagenda

download presentation

Publication: "Tailoring spatial reference in early warning systems to administrative units"

2011-03-29T10:43:36Z

"Tailoring spatial reference in early warning systems to administrative units", Earth Science Informatics, Volume 4, Issue 1, 7-16

DOI: 10.1007/s12145-010-0075-y

http://www.springerlink.com/content/5k71277584761771/

Abstract:

This paper presents a novel approach for early warning systems to transform the spatial reference of dispersion models into addressable administrative units, enabling an intelligible warning message reception and spatial awareness. The spatial reference along the entire information chain from sensor measurements via dispersion model to warning dissemination is discussed. The core concept behind this approach is the application of the Egenhofer-Model for analysis of binary topologic relations. It is used to identify topologic relations between dispersion model forecasts and administrative units. The result set of intersection matrices defines the relations that are counted for area classification with hazard specific parameters. The design of a generic and hazard-independent web service based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards is presented in combination with results of the reference implementation.

Presentation at deegree day: "Application of OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) in Tsunami Early Warning System DEWS"

2011-03-29T10:49:44Z

"Application of OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) in Tsunami Early Warning System DEWS" , deegree day, University of Bonn, Germany

http://deegreeday.deegree.org/2010/programme

Erfahrungsbericht: WPS-Nutzung in einem Tsunami-Frühwarnsystem

Download presentation [in German]

Presentations at AGIT 2010 Conference in Salzburg, Austria

2011-03-29T10:53:38Z

Two posters and one technical paper contributed to the AGIT (Angewandte Geoinformatik) Conference (all in German).

Press release at ICT results: "New tsunami early warning system stands guard"

2011-03-28T11:57:49Z

The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami killed 230,000 people. The next time a tsunami threatens Indian Ocean nations, a lifesaving early warning system spearheaded by the EU will be in place.

Starting a few seconds before 1am universal time on 26 December, 2004, a 1600km segment of the Indian tectonic plate jolted downward just off the coast of Indonesia, lifting the seafloor by several metres and displacing some 30 cubic kilometres of water. With a magnitude of 9.2, it was the second strongest earthquake ever measured. The resulting tsunami waves - some of them 30m high - began to hit just 20 minutes later. They wreaked massive destruction and killed an estimated 230,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and 12 other countries.

This disaster, one of the deadliest in recorded history, brought home the urgent need for an effective system to give at-risk populations around the Indian Ocean as much warning as possible the next time a tsunami strikes.

Europe quickly rose to the challenge. Germany was the first to take action with the joint German-Indonesian tsunami detection and warning system called GITEWS.

Building on the infrastructure and experience developed through GITEWS, the EU funded and launched DEWS (Distant Early Warning System) in 2007 to include and provide protection to all the nations of the Indian Ocean region.

DEWS has now created and started to deploy a sustainable system to detect and analyse seismic events in the Indian Ocean, quickly assess their potential to unleash a tsunami, and warn all of the at-risk countries in time to save lives.

"It's almost impossible to give numbers," says Andreas Küppers, researcher in charge of the DEWS demonstrator, "but if DEWS had been in place in December, 2004, a very large number of lives could have been saved."

Detect, model, warn - in time

An effective tsunami warning system starts with a network of strategically deployed detectors. In the case of DEWS, these include broadband seismometers, land and ocean-surface based GPS instruments, tide gauges and ocean bottom pressure control devices. The different kinds of sensors provide complementary information that allows more accurate assessment of the risk of a tsunami.

The data generated by this suite of instruments is streamed via communication satellites to a central station in Jakarta, Indonesia for processing. State-of-the-art open source software called SeisComP3 developed by the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), the lead institute for the DEWS project prototypes, rapidly determines the magnitude and location of a seismic event.

"The former systems needed 11 or 12 minutes to detect a signal and locate the source," says Küppers. "The same can now be done in four minutes."

Once the system detects an earthquake powerful enough to create a tsunami, it begins to analyse and model the risk of a tsunami. If waves are detected from ocean bottom pressure sensors or newly developed GPS buoys at the sea surface, it's possible that a tsunami has been generated and will strike somewhere. The next question is where and with what run-up height.

Even with powerful computing capabilities, modelling an event as complicated as a tsunami in real time would take far too long. An earthquake along the Sunda arc - the source of the Boxing Day quake - can generate tsunami waves that hit the coast of Indonesia within 20 minutes.

The DEWS researchers solved that problem by using libraries of temblors of different magnitudes and source locations, coupled with detailed simulations of the waves they would create around the entire Indian Ocean coastline.

When an actual earthquake shakes the region, the DEWS system automatically finds the simulation that best fits the event, and uses that to determine which coastal areas are at risk.

"It's not possible to do all the modelling of wave propagation and direction immediately after the event," says Küppers. "But the system works well with our prefab models."

With 20 countries to warn and a Babel of languages to deal with, the DEWS team has to put as much effort into the linguistic challenges and politics of how to warn all these countries and their at-risk population as into the technological and computational infrastructure.

The system has a component to compose and distribute messages and another to control if messages have been properly received or not. In addition, it is a multilingual system that can distribute different messages to different people in different languages, says Küppers. "It was even more difficult politically to get all the players together at one table," he adds, "but we are well on our way to overcoming those problems as well."

The working system has been demonstrated in association with DEWS project conference. Decision-makers in local and regional authorities have expressed interest in the DEWS project working system.

Bringing the benefits back home

Building on the success of DEWS in the Indian Ocean basin, the focus shifts to Europe, where a tsunami may occur at any time either in the Mediterranean Sea or in the North-East Atlantic.

Greece, Turkey and Portugal are the countries at greatest risk, but all the nations bordering the Mediterranean could be safer once DEWS is implemented there as well. Many preliminary steps toward that goal will be taken by other EU-financed projects such as TRANSFER, NERIES and SAFER.

Perhaps the single greatest innovation flowing from DEWS is the realisation that minimising infrastructure damage and loss of life from a natural or manmade disaster requires an enormous amount of technical knowledge and a high degree of coordination. As a result, the consortium is advocating the development of a new profession - that of the ‘early warning engineer'.

"If you want to tackle these problems properly, you have to take the time and effort to involve everybody," says Küppers. "So we'd like to see people acquiring a new full-scale profession and be able to take care of the whole early warning field."

The DEWS project received funding from the Sixth Framework Programme for research.

>> Press release at ICT Results

DEWS demonstrations at the "Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften" (Long Night of Sciences)

2011-03-28T12:00:50Z

An audience of round about 100 guests took the opportunity to see the DEWS-presentations in three different sessions.
At the Long Night of the Sciences various institutes and research groups of Berlin/Brandenburg presents their research topics to the general public. Through vivid lectures, guided tours, interactive experiments, readings, panel discussions, workshops, and much more, visitors can gain impressions of new research results from basic and applied research including interdisciplinary collaboration.

DEWS-presentation (PDF 3 MB in german)