Risk Information System

According to the United Nations System for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), Belgium has a low probability of natural disaster occurrences such as floods, earthquakes, storms... These natural disasters are not very deadly, as they only killed 98 people in ten years, from 2005 to 2014. Although they are not very frequent, nor very deadly, they do cause considerable economic losses. From 2005 to 2014, natural disasters induced economic losses estimated at 83,6679 billions of Euros. The Probabilistic risk results calculated in 2014 by UNISDR, show that future natural hazard damages were approximated to 631,95 millions of Euros in Average Annual Loss (AAL). Earthquakes alone were predicted to contribute the most to the average annual loss, estimated at 168,18 millions of Euros. Furthermore, the country is also affected by human-made disasters such as terrorist attacks, explosion of nuclear power plants... The most recent and prevalent are the terrorist attacks and threats, that killed and injured, 38 and 348 people, respectively in less than 10 years. Therefore, from the year 2014, was born the incentive to build a Risk Information System also known as an Early Warning System (EWS) that could help saving lives and properties, by alerting the community about predicted risks or occurring emergencies and disasters and by giving guidance to follow in such events. Be-alert has shortcomings, since it provides only textual information, which is not always very intuitive. The textual representation of emergency information is not tailored for stressful situations such as emergencies, in which users of the system should carefully read the messages to understand what they entail. However, representing risks on a Map, would allow users to capture disaster information without much effort. Additionally, Be-alert does not capture clearly the extent and coverage of a disaster with respect to the user's position which is important for the user, who needs to clearly and rapidly distinguish safe areas and dangerous ones, needs to know how far he or she is from the closest safe place and the route to follow to get there. The goal of this master thesis was to build a prototype of a Risk Information System (RIS), a web-based system inspired by the Be-alert system. The first objective was to inform individuals living on the Belgian territory, about disasters that directly affect their current position, by displaying disasters or emergencies areas on a map so that the users can rapidly distinguish safe areas from affected ones. The prototype also intended to permit users to perceive all the occurring disasters in the country. The second objective was to permit users to view a route to their closest safe place on a map, and follow textual directions to the safe place. The third objective of the RIS system was to enable users to view emergency information for specific location for their dependent family members. The fourth objective was to allow users to report any suspected risk or perceived disaster. The last objective was to provide a dedicated interface allowing the risk management team to add, update delete and broadcast risks or emergencies.