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B.4.1.3 Natural Disasters / Environmental

 

Introduction

Nowadays the humankind must increasingly address serious problems connected to the natural environment in order to enhance the quality of life, to save the natural resources, and to reduce the social and economical impact of natural events. Environmental issues are twofold: the natural disasters pose hazards on the human life and activities, while environmental pollution and ecosystem destruction endanger the natural resources.

 

Natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, floods, forest fires, volcanic eruptions, landslides) may greatly affect the human beings and their goods as well as the animals and the vegetal world, by endangering their life and by damaging or destroying their habitat. These needs become higher where the population is denser and where these phenomena are more intense or frequent

 

Natural disasters, pose an ever-present challenge to public emergency services. In order to cope with such disasters in a fast and highly coordinated manner, the optimal provision of information concerning the situation is an essential pre-requisite. Police, fire departments, and other organizations have to react not only efficiently and individually, but also in a coordinated manner. This results in the need of both intra and inter organization coordination at several hierarchy levels. Since coordination requires current information, and such information must be communicated upstream and downstream within and between organizations in real-time, the need arises for an integrated communication and information system for disaster management that provides efficient, reliable and secure exchange and processing of relevant information (FOKUS).

 

CARiMan system will be capable to provide risk managers and all related organizations with all the appropriate tools to react immediately in a natural disaster event. In CARiMan project the implementation of the CARiMan system in five natural disasters will be examined. The selected natural disasters are:

 

- Fe: CARiMan in Fire emergencies

- Fl: CARiMan in Flood emergencies

- Ls: CARiMan in Landslides Emergencies

- Ve: CARiMan in volcanic Environments

- Se: Seismik CARiMan

- En: Environmental CARiMan

- RE: Risk Modelling of Renewable Energy Sources

- ME: Risk evaluation in marine ecosystems

 The ones that appear mostly in European level. There are several other natural disasters (e.g. tsunamis, tornados, etc) that don’t occur often in Europe thus we decided not to include them in CARiMan. However, we believe that after the successful implementation of CARiMan in the selected natural disasters, the governmental organizations of third countries (e.g. USA, Australia) would like to fund the development of CARiMan for natural disasters they face more often.

Human activities tend to endanger the natural resources by producing environmental pollution and, consequently, by damaging and even destroying the ecosystems. One of the main goals of modern society consists in containing and, hopefully, stopping these degenerative processes. The efforts oriented in this direction aim to define development models that account for the co-evolutionary relationship between humans and environment. In particular, the concept of sustainable progress is spreading; this is a model in which the human progress (with fast dynamics) and the natural environment progress (with slow dynamics) co-exist over a long-time scale. The application of sustainable progress models cannot leave out of consideration the fundamental activity of environmental monitoring – JPA En. Only on the basis of the concrete results obtained from this activity it is possible to undertake an informed discussion that brings to operative decisions.

Increasing the contribution of renewable electricity is a key part of the EU strategy to tackle climate change. EU already has a significant target of increasing generation from renewable energy sources. Renewable sources mainly include small-scale hydro, on-shore and off-shore wind, solar, wave and tidal flows, landfill and sewage gas. EU is encouraging these sources through new legislation and financial incentives.

The manager of renewable sources has to deal with several issues arising from uncertainties in production, market prices, and technologies’ attributes, which need to be considered while making trading decisions in order to maximise its profit from trading and at the same time minimising its risk exposure to the market. Associated with this there are concerns about how to characterise the risk associated with these issues and co-operate it within a decision making process. Consideration of this risk is vital for a successful renewable operation in an open trading environment. The JPA Re addresses modelling of the risk associated with electricity production and market participation of the renewable sources.

   

 

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