CIPCast Decision Support System

Inspiration

Decision Support System Platforms, with Geographical-Information-System features and user-friendly Graphical User Interface are already operationally used for supporting the risk assessment and management of natural and man-induced hazards and for facilitating participated decision making processes, involving multiple stakeholders. They are also used for increasing risk awareness in communities. With some minor tunings, these tools can be used for identifying effective response strategies to the COVID-19 sanitary emergency and for mitigating induced-impacts.

What it does

CIPCast DSS, Decision Support System allow for the real time and operational (24/7) monitoring and risk analysis of crises events. CIPCast DSS provides simulation capabilities for both real or user-defined scenarios allowing to periodically assess disaster risks, (assessed as a function of the hazard characteristics, exposed assets, physical and social vulnerability, capacities and available resources) and their possible sequential effects at the relevant social and spatial scale.

How it was built

CIPCast, is an existing user-friendly and interoperable Decision Support System platform and Database developed by ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, in the frame of an EU-FP7 funded project, conceived as a combination of free/open source software environments including GIS features.

Accomplishments

CIPCast DSS platform, along with a suit of innovative technological developments (feeding data and information within CIPCast) are already used by different stakeholders and Public Administrations in Italy for assessing risks from natural hazards and for identifying resilience strategies. CIPCast DSS, along with a suite of innovative technologies, is the reference tool to boost the simulation and analysis capabilities of EISAC.it, the Italian node of the European Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Centre EISAC.it (http://www.eisac.it/).

EISAC.it is a competence center for critical infrastructure protection in Italy, and it is part of EISAC framework, an EU-wide initiative aiming at establishing a European-wide collaborative platform among different competence centers (similar to EISAC.it) all over Europe.

EISAC.it and CIPCast DSS have been selected to the part of the Innovation Platform of the 2019 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction Geneva (GP2019) organised by the United Nation Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)

Learnings from #EUvsVIRUS

There are at least 20 000 enthusiastic capable and tireless people out there available to help! The necessary knowledge, know-how integration and IT tunings to customise CIPCast DSS so that it can be used for assessing risks for COVID-19 and its wide-range impacts, are surely feasible and achievable in a short time.

What's next for CIPCast DSS

With some tuning CIPCast DSS can effectively support fighting COVID-19 by providing a platform for

collating and putting into context the health data collected by the different dedicated apps that have been developed or are under development
combining overlay and process data of different nature
assessing actual risk and simulate different impact scenarios
allowing different stakeholders to access and visualise the current situations and possible evolving scenarios (from health, business continuity and community point of view, among others) and to compare and discuss mitigations strategies, accounting for the several factors at stake
ensuring interoperability across different EU countries