5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014 Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice 24-28 August 2014 in Davos, Switzerland

1. The Unified Localizable Emergency Scale
5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Eli Rohn, PhD, CISA, CGEIT
Department of Information Systems Engineering
Ben-Gurion University, Israel
__________________
With the cooperation and contribution of
Prof’ Denis Blackmore, Dept. of Mathematics, NJIT (USA)

2. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Ben-Gurion University, Israel

3. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Are they All Emergencies?

4. Is there a fair way to optimize resources allocation?
5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org

5. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
How to Define an Emergency?
• Maybe use a list of events
– How do you know it is complete?
– Does it matter where the event occurs?
• Use a set of required conditions
– Hermann's (1963) classification, for example
• Use a scale of some sort
– Richter scale
– Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale (1-5)
– Do these scales cover all emergency types?
• Search for information to confirm assessment
– Information processing under duress is very limited!

6. Source: http://www.fema.gov/hazard/types.shtm
FEMA lists events rather than define what it is.
5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
What is an Emergency?
•Chemical Emergencies
•Dam Failure
•Earthquake
•Fire or Wildfire
•Flood
•Hazardous Material
•Heat
•Hurricane
•Landslide
•Nuclear Power Plant
Emergency
•Terrorism
•Thunderstorm
•Tornado
•Tsunami
•Volcano
•Wildfire
•Winter Storm

7. • Financial markets meltdown
• Epidemic / pandemic
• Massive thefts
• Cyber attack, historic relics destruction, etc…
Organizational emergencies
5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
But what about…
• Strike
• Court Case
• Cost overrun
• Delivery delay
• New regulation
• Supply shortage
• Production delay
• Product malfunction
• Contract Negotiation
• Loss of a key customer
• Responding to an RFP
• Loss of key employee(s)
• New Competitive product

8. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
What is an Emergency ?
• A prevalent definition is Hermann's (1963) classification
in which a crisis is said to occur when three conditions
are present:
(1) there is a major threat to system survival;
(2) there is little time to react;
(3) the threat (timing) is unanticipated.
Hermann, Charles F.(1963)
Some consequences of crisis which limit the viability of organizations.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 8: 343-358.

9. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Emergency Scales
• No objectively measurable emergency scale existed to date
– 1805: The Beaufort Wind Scale
– 1931: Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale
– 1935: Richter Scales
– 1969: Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale
– 1971: The Fujita Tornado Scale
– 1999: Air-Quality Index
– 2001: US Security Terror Alert Scale

10. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Information Processing Under Threat
• Organizations facing adversity limit information processing
• Restricted number of alternatives considered by policy makers
• Fewer sources of information are consulted in a crisis
• Simplification of cognition and language used
• Media inaccuracy adds to uncertainty and possible confusion
• People avoid ambiguity and uncertainty

11. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Assertions
• A standard objective emergency scale is vital to quantify and
unambiguously communicate the nature of any emergency.
• Any emergency can be defined using three orthogonal
dimensions:
– Scope
– Topographical change (or lack thereof)
–Delta, the rate of change.
• The intersection of the three dimensions provides a detailed
scale for defining emergencies.

12. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Scope
• A continuous variable with a lower limit of zero and a
theoretical calculable upper limit.
• We use two parameters that form the scope:
– percent of affected humans out of the entire population
– damages, or loss, as a percentile of a given Gross National Product
(GNP)

13. Victims Monetary Losses losses
5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
victims
www.grforum.org
Scope, formalized
ln( )
* ln( )
RawScope
Population GNP


 
  
 
  
  
 

14. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Topographical Change
• A measurable and noticeable change in land characteristics, in
terms of elevation, slope, orientation and land coverage.
• Pseudo-Topo
– Volume or area affected by the emergency (e.g., SWINE flu, EBOLA)
• Continuum ranging between 0 and 1
• Estimated visual fractional change in the environment.
– The ratio between the geographical volume occupied before the
disaster and the volume occupied after the disaster, in relation to sea
level.

15. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
victims time 
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Rate of Change
• Measures the rate of departure from a given environment in a
given time.
• We are interested in calculating:
– Δ victims / Δ time and
– Δ losses / Δ time
• Possible to calculate critical points and singular points using
derivates to identify trend changes and their magnitude or
speed.

16. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
E = f(s,t,d)
An emergency (crisis) is a function of Scope, Topographical Change and Speed of Change
It can be plotted on a 3-axis graph

17. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Emergency Critical Surface
Events under the Critical Surface are NOT emergencies
Article explains how to calculate and establish this surface

18. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Emergency’s Progress
Calculate the emergency size of the event at different points in time

19. Emergency’s Progress with Critical Surface
5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
1. Events under the
Critical Surface are not
emergencies
2. Can calculate the
trajectory thus predict
the near future
3. Can tell if reached
maximum

20. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Usage Example
Swine (H1N1) Flu 2009 (emergency)

21. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Swine Flu (H1N1) in California
Data collected from official CDC website
California Data
Scale Localized for California
Cannot see the emergency?
That’s because there was none!

22. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Swine Flu (H1N1) in US Media

23. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
EBOLA 2014 West Africa
Scale Localized for Equatorial-Guinea

24. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
SUMMARY
• The Unified Localizable Emergency Scale:
– Unified: can quantify any type of situation
– Localizable: can be customized to a specific region (EU), Federation,
Country, County or Metropolitan
– Scale:
• 3D ratio scale (zero has meaning) for professional
• Linear numerical scale for public consumption
• Quantifies emergencies numerically
– Can compare any emergency to another one
– Helps decision makers to fairly allocate resources

25. 5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Horizon 2020
• I am looking for partners in order to:
– Improve the existing software
– Conduct research to refine the model
– Conduct research to re-validate the model
– Research and Develop a Dynamic Critical Surface
FYI - I have additional research collaboration opportunities

26. Added value for the Post 2015 Framework for
5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Disaster Risk Reduction
• This work support the Hyogo Framework for Action by
– Helps in resources allocation commensurate with disaster event
– Potentially helps reduce waste of resources in crisis
• From my perspective, educating about the unified localizable
emergency scale and training professionals how to use it
properly would help close existing GAPS towards fulfilling the
promise of the Hyogo Framework.

27. Q & A
5th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2014
‘Integrative Risk Management - The role of science, technology & practice‘ • 24-28 August 2014 • Davos • Switzerland
www.grforum.org
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
The Department of
Information Systems Engineering
GRF IDRC
24-28 August 2014
Eli Rohn, PhD, CISA, CGEIT, CNA
elirohn@bgu.ac.il