Portuguese Flood Risk Assessment and Implementation of a Visualization Tool for Coordinated Actions and Collaborative Planning (PAP014727)

Código

PAP014727

Autores

Pedro Miguel de Almeida Garrett Graça Lopes, Luís Filipe Antunes Dias, Andre Moitinho de Almeida, Alberto Krone-Martins

Tema

Urban Floods

Resumo

Floods can cause loss of life, population displacement, damage to property and the environment plus undermine business activities. Flood risk has gained importance in recent decades where national and local authorities must be involved in constant planning activities in order to be better adapt and able to respond to critical situations. A collaboration between the VA-4D project for the European Space Agency (see http://goo.gl/U5SFdC) and the CIRAC project (Flood Risk and Vulnerability Mapping in Climate Change Scenarios; http://goo.gl/BhYTsT) was establish to develop a collaborative platform that helps different stakeholders take coordinated actions and planning activities. This collaborative platform was developed in four stages. First, a flood risk assessment for Lisbon, Oporto, Algés and Coimbra were developed in the CIRAC project, identifying and characterizing the potential flood impacts and damage. In the second stage risk management and software development specialists were gathered to address the main common functionalities of a visualization tool for the VA-4D project. Thirdly, and also in the VA-4D project, a web based platform was developed with a set of visualization techniques to interactively analyze geo-referenced and time sampled data sets, providing an integrated mechanism that aids the user to collaboratively explore, present and communicate visually complex and dynamic data. These concepts were presented in the context of a 4 hour flood scenario from Lisbon in 2010, with data that includes measures of water column (flood height) every 10 minutes at a 4.5 m x 4.5 m resolution, topography, building damage, building information, and online base maps. Used techniques include web-based linked views, multiple charts, map layers and storytelling. Finally insurance companies, national and local government, civil protection and private consultants were invited to participate in a workshop to discuss, explore and evaluate the needs and the presented functionalities. Results from the workshop showed that 73% of the participants classified the visualization tool as important (4) and very important (5), in a zero to five classification, for their daily work activity. In terms of user friendliness 54% classified in four and five, also in a zero to five classification, and 44% between zero and three. Several groups of stakeholders identified the need to couple the tool into a simulation model in order to experiment different types of solutions and also add real time visualization capabilities to be integrated in an early warning system. This tool can be found online at http://siam.fc.ul.pt/cirac/floodvis/