Dealing with an accident involving CBRN hazardous substances or toxic materials presents an enormous challenge to the authorities and the emergency services involved due to the high dynamism of the situation and the potentially immense damage. The timely availability of all carefully prepared decision criteria based on current information is a major factor contributing to the successful management of such a situation with the goal of limiting detrimental effects on the health of the population and damage to the environment.
Huge progress has been made in the past decade concerning the modelling and simulation of the effect of accidents with hazardous substances and their atmospheric dispersion. In order to obtain accurate results, a number of input parameters for the source term must be considered, not least the buildings in urban areas. Although products are available that employ more complex models to assess the consequences of an accident, the fact is that these insights and tools are not currently available for coping with the situation in case of an incident. Also, neither the process required for determining the input parameters to the required degree of detail nor the one for evaluating the results is defined yet.
The goal of B.PREPARED is to design an emergency planning and decision-support system for decision-makers in the authorities to support them in managing accidents involving hazardous substances. This system will implement preparatory data gathering, continuous threat situation updates using reference scenarios, information exchange with first responders, and modelled hazard forecasting in order to provide appropriate decision-making support based on the current information status. The basis for this is the definition of processes that are derived from reference scenarios and involve all stakeholders attempting to control the situation, the definition of suitable procedures to determine the source term and the situation-specific employment of model calculations for the hazard forecast including consideration of the relevant influence factors for densely built-up areas. Great emphasis is placed on the design of the processes to guarantee stakeholder acceptance and that the uncertainties resulting from the hazard forecast can be included in the decision-making process in a suitable form. The suitability of the developed reference processes for the collaboration of authorities and emergency services will be evaluated in the form of a lab-based prototype of a portal in connection with a staff command and major incident management system used in Warning and Emergency Call Centres.
Projektleiter
Harald Lernbeiß, BSc.
JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
Institut DIGITAL
Forschungsgruppe Cyber Security and Defence
Steyrergasse 17
8010 Graz
E-Mail: harald.lernbeiss@joanneum.at
Tel.: +43 316 876-1120
Web: https://www.joanneum.at/digital
Konsortialführer
JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
Projektpartner:
Magistratsdirektion der Stadt Graz, Sicherheitsmanagement und Bevölkerungsschutz
Bundesministerium für Landesverteidigung
Berufsfeuerwehr Graz, Abteilung Katastrophenschutz und Feuerwehr
Berufsfeuerwehr Wien (Magistratsabteilung 68)
Chemiepark Linz Betriebsfeuerwehr GmbH
Oö. Landes-Feuerwehrverband
Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik
Disaster Competence Network Austria
IRIS - Industrial Risk and Safety Solutions e.U.
Intergraph Ges.m.b.H.
