Partners Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, France (coordinator); ITTI Sp. z o.o., Poland; Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e. V., Germany; THALES SA, France; Compagnie Européenne d’Intelligence Stratégique, Belgium; Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research TNO, The Netherlands; Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland; Veiligheids regio Zuid-Holland Zuid (Safety region South-Holland South), The Netherlands; Suomen ympäristökeskus (Finnish Environment Institute), Finland; Union Internationale des Chemins de fers, France; Thales Netherlands, The Netherlands
PREDICT in Brief
The PREDICT solution will be composed of the following three pillars: methodologies, models and software tools. Their integrated use will increase the awareness and understanding of cascading effects by crisis response organisations, enhances their preparedness and improves their response capability to respond in case of cascading failures.
Press release: EU project proposes solutions to manage the unexpected
Background
PREDICT project will start from a deep analysis of recent cases (over 8500 incidents worldwide), which will be accompanied with scenarios of potential crisis. Project partners will set up a generic approach (common framework) to prevent or mitigate cascading effects which will be applied in selected cases agreed with end-users.
As modelling each phenomenon separately in a specific environment is not effective, PREDICT project will propose cohesive and comprehensive models of dependencies, cascading effects and common m ode failure which will include causal relations, multi-sectoral infrastructure elements and environment parameters, as well as the human factor aspects.
PREDICT will deliver software tools bundled in PREDICT Incident Evolution Tool, which will consist of two core components: a Foresight and Prediction Tool (for simulation of the evolution of cascading effect and impact on multi-sectoral dependencies) and a Decision-Support Tool (for determining the best course of action and to calculate the risk associated with them).
The high-quality of the developed solutions will be assured by a consortium consisting of a number of experienced partners joining research, industrial (incl. SME), and end-users approaches. End-users will be deeply involved in PREDICT at three levels: as partners of the consortium (there are three end-users in the consortium), members of the Advisory Board, and representatives from relevant organisations across Europe.
Main Objectives
- WP 1. ) Management & Coordination;
- WP 2.) Domain analysis and Requirements. WP2 will be a baseline for understanding cascading effects and resilience in complex systems. This comprehensive assessment of cascading effects and resilience of systems is a primary step words the development of the appropriate crisis management tools and methodologies and the developing of the corresponding decision support system (DSS). The main objective of WP2 is to provide a methodology to assess the cascading effect in a given set of complex systems within a given level of interconnectivity and under well-defined thresholds. The definition of cascading patterns and the selection of the sets of complex systems will be guided by real failures events occurred in the past. Different basic approaches are worked out worldwide, but robust predictive tools are not yet available. Within this WP, the possible end-users needs will be identified and analysed.
- WP 3.) Incident Evolution Framework. This work package aims at developing a generic methodology for understanding the incident evolution and thus improving the capability to mitigate potential cascading effects. The overall objective of the WP is to describe, at technical and mathematical level, how the evolution of the incident can be observed, predicted and communicated. The incident, in this context, covers temporal, spatial, organisational aspects of the crisis.
- WP 4.) System Design & Iterative Integration. This work package aims at designing a system architecture suitable for integrating novel prediction and DSS tools for cross-border crisis
- management, at defining a design methodology for the system architecture, preparing the realisation of the system architecture and identifying and specifying interfaces between system components and tools
- WP 5.) Foresight and Prediction Tools. The main objective of WP5 is to develop core back-end PREDICT system modules and appropriate interfaces for WP6 Decision Support tools. Each of these module-based software tools will be designed and developed for the purpose of modelling and simulation of specific cascade effect aspects.
- WP 6.) Decision Support Tools. In complex crisis situations where one event may leads to another, foresight and prediction are largely dependent on human judgement and expertise, in addition to the calculations made with computational models. This is especially true in complex cross-border incidents where various multi-sectorial crisis management services must collaborate, even though their supporting systems are only partially interoperable. The real challenge of WP6 is not only to be able to establish formal and mathematical models of risk indicators but also to provide tools, techniques and methods to support the risk-based decision making process in order to develop action plan.
- WP 7.) Prototype and Testing Validation. This WP will focus on applicability and value added for end-users of the various PREDICT deliverables, not on technically testing them in isolation and/or integrated. Technical testing activities of the developed PREDICT software solutions will be performed on a different levels and within the scope of a different WPs.
- WP 8.) End-User network. The consortium will engage with external end-users in workshops organised throughout the duration of the project. The inputs gathered from these workshops will feed the deliverables of the various work packages. End-users Group members will be invited to these meetings to advise on and influence the project (both in terms of input and assessment).
- WP 9.) Dissemination & Exploitation. The aim of this Work Package is to organise the dissemination of the knowledge obtained in the project in order to increase the understanding of cascading effect for first responders, policy makers and the general public. The goal will be to focus on solutions relevant for different types of end-users at different levels, and for different scenarios.
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