Luigi La Porta

An open source GIS system for earthquake early warning and post-event emergency management

The recent advances in geo-informatics have been opening new opportunities in earthquake early warning and emergency management issues. In the last years, the geo-scientific community has recognized the added value of a geo-analytic approach in complex decision making processes for critical situations due to disastrous natural events such as earthquakes. In fact, recently, GIS-based solutions are investigated in several research projects such as SIT_MEW Project, aimed at the development of volcanic and seismic early warning systems (EWSs). In this project context, an innovative open source GIS system has been investigated and developed as integrated component of the seismic EWS. Its architecture consists in a geospatial database system, a local GIS application for analyzing and modelling the seismic event and its impacts and supporting post-event emergency management, a WEB-GIS module for sharing the geo-information among the public and private stakeholders and emergency managers involved in disaster impact assessment and response management.

Land Suitability Evaluation for Agro-forestry: Definition of a Web-Based Multi-Criteria Spatial Decision Support System (MC-SDSS): Preliminary Results

Land suitability evaluation (LSE) is a widespread methodology that supports environmental managers and planners in analysing the interactions between location, development actions, and environmental elements. In the present paper, we discuss on a web-based multi-criteria spatial decision support system (MC-SDSS) implemented to accomplish LSE for agro-forestry. We propose a MC-SDSS developed on a free open source software for geospatial (FOSS4G) environment, accessible through a user-friendly geographical user interface (GUI) that allows to perform geospatial analyses. To this end, the MC-SDSS has been conceived as a multi-tier architecture, able to manage processes executable via OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) web processing services (WPSs) and produce output maps and data available via the largely used OGC services: web feature service (WFS), web coverage service (WCS) and web map service (WMS). In this first application, we chose the weighted linear combination (WLC) as decision rule to aggregate data, weighted by judgements provided by experts following the analytical hierarchy process (AHP).

Collaborative Open Source Geospatial Tools and Maps Supporting the Response Planning to Disastrous Earthquake Events

The latest improvements in geo-informatics offer new opportunities in a wide range of territorial and environmental applications. In this general framework, a relevant issue is represented by earthquake early warning and emergency management. This research work presents the investigation and development of a simple and innovative geospatial methodology and related collaborative open source geospatial tools for predicting and mapping the vulnerability to seismic hazard in order to support the response planning to disastrous events. The proposed geospatial methodology and tools have been integrated into an open source collaborative GIS system, designed and developed as an integrated component of an earthquake early warning and emergency management system.

Wave energy potential in the Mediterranean sea: Design and development of DSS-WebGIS “waves energy”

GIS technologies are able to provide useful tools for estimating the energy resource from the sea waves, assessing whether this energy is exploitable and evaluating possible environmental impacts. The idea to convert the energy associated with the marine wave motion (both off-shore and coastal) into exploitable electrical energy is not new and over time several projects have been developed, aiming at the implementation of devices for electrical energy generation from the sea. However, compared to other well-established renewable sources (such as wind, solar or biomass), the exploitation of the tidal power, is currently only in prototype form. Nevertheless, it has shown very promising potentiality, as also emerges from the activities currently carried-out by public institutions and private stakeholders.

Remote sensing and GIS in planning photovoltaic potential of urban areas

Abstract The last guidelines approved by Italian government to financially support the solar Photovoltaic (PV) Energy production development include specific indications for more advantageously funding installations exploiting roofs/covers surfaces mainly located in urban or industrial areas. Since the 3D heterogeneity, albedo, atmospheric turbidity and casting shadows significantly influence here the local solar irradiance, the implemented methodology allowed us to suitably account for these distributed factors by means active (LIDAR) and passive satellite/airborne remote sensing techniques and advanced GIS modelling tools in order to support more realistic estimates of PV potential at roofs level in urban areas.

Mapping the earthquake-induced landslide hazard around the main oil pipeline network of the Agri Valley (Basilicata, southern Italy) by means of two GIS-based modelling approaches

Abstract This study presents a first-level spatial assessment of the susceptibility to earthquake-induced landslides in the seismic area of the Agri Valley (Basilicata Region, southern Italy), which hosts the largest onshore oilfield and oil/gas extraction and pre-treatment plant in Europe and is the starting point of the 136-km-long pipeline that transports the plant’s products to the refinery located in Taranto, on the Ionian seacoast. Two methodologies derived from the ones proposed by Newmark (Geotechnique 15(2):139–159, 1965) and Rapolla et al. (Eng Geol 114:10–25, 2010, Nat Hazards 61:115–126, 2012. doi:10.1007/s11069-011-9790-z), based on different modelling approaches, were implemented using the available geographic information system tools, which allowed a very effective exploitation of the two models capability for regional zoning of the earthquake-induced landslide hazard. Subsequently, the results obtained from the two models were compared by both visual evaluation of thematic products and statistical correlation analysis of quantitative indices, such as the Safety Index based on the Newmark’s approach and the Susceptibility Index from Rapolla’s model. The comparison showed a general agreement in highlighting the most critical areas. However, some slight differences between the two models’ results were observed, especially where rock materials and steep slopes are prevailing.

Integrated GIS and remote sensing techniques to support PV potential assessment of roofs in Urban areas

The last guidelines approved by Italian government to financially support the solar Photovoltaic (PV) Energy production development (Fourth and Fifth feed-in-scheme, January 2012 and later), in order to avoid soil consumption in agricultural or naturals areas, include specific indications for more advantageously funding installations exploiting roofs or covers surfaces. In this context it becomes important, for a suitable PV planning and monitoring, the extensive mapping of the available surfaces extent, usually corresponding to covers and properly assessing their quality in term of PV potential. Since the covers are mainly located in urban or industrial areas, whose 3D heterogeneity, albedo, atmospheric turbidity and casting shadows significantly influence the local solar irradiance, it is necessary to suitably account for these distributed factors by means of GIS mapping and advanced modeling tools in order to provide realistic estimates of solar available radiance at roofs level. The implemented methodology, based on remote sensing techniques, has allowed to estimate and map the global solar radiance over all the roofs within Avellino (southern Italy) municipality. Starting from LIDAR data, DSM of the entire area of interest (~42 Km2) has been firstly obtained; then the 3D model of each building and related cover has been derived. To account the atmospheric transparency and the related time-dependent diffuse/direct radiation percentage on the area, data and tools from EU PVGIS web application have been also used. The final processing to obtain the solar radiance maps has been carried out using specific software modules available within commercial and open-source GIS packages.

Design of DSS for Supporting Preparedness to and Management of Anomalous Situations in Complex Scenarios

Decision Support Systems (DSS) are complex technological tools, which enable an accurate and complete scenario awareness, by integrating data from both “external” (physical) situation and current behaviour and state of functioning of the technological systems. The aim is to produce a scenario analysis and to guess identify educated the most efficient strategies to cope with possible crises. In the domain of Critical Infrastructures (CI) Protection, DSS can be used to support strategy elaboration from CI operators, to improve emergency managers capabilities, to improve quality and efficiency of preparedness actions. For these reasons, the EU project CIPRNet, among others, has realised a new DSS designed to help operators to deal with the complex task of managing multi-sectorial CI crises, due to natural events, where many different CI might be involved, either directly or via cascading effects produced by (inter-)dependency mechanisms. This DSS, called CIPCast, is able to produce a real-time operational risk forecast of CI in a given area; other than usable in a real-time mode, CIPCast could also be used as scenario builder, by using event simulators enabling the simulation of synthetic events whose impacts on CI could be emulated. A major improvement of CIPCast is its capability of measuring societal consequences related to the unavailability of primary services such as those delivered by CI.

Multi-printed inkjet phantoms for radionuclide molecular imaging

This work describes the multi-printing technique for preparing, with a commercial inkjet printer and radio marked ink, planar emission phantoms particularly suitable for high-resolution radionuclide imaging. The well known practice of producing radioactive phantoms by inkjet was improved by developing the multi-printing technique definable as the reiteration of printing commands before processing the next line. The major advantage consists of the increase of the concentration of radioactivity deposited in the image with respect to the standard over-printing method without refilling radioactivity in the cartridge. Since the paper needs just one insertion in the printer, a better outlined image is produced than in the case of the over-printing technique obtainable by reiterating both the insertion and the printing of the same image over of the same sheet. This paper discusses in particular: (1) the linear dependence of deposited activity vs. the number of multi-printing cycles; (2) the effective decay’s time of radio marker at nozzle’s output; (3) the evaluation of the absolute value of the activity deposited in the image and (4) the broadening of the printed surfaces vs. the number of multi-printing cycles.

A Decision Support System for Emergency Management of Critical Infrastructures Subjected to Natural Hazards

Natural hazards might damage elements of Critical Infrastructures and produce perturbations on the delivered services. In addition, (inter)dependency phenomena interconnecting infrastructures, may amplify impacts through cascading effects. In this paper, we present a Decision Support System (DSS) aiming at predicting the possible effects of natural hazards on the services provided by critical infrastructures. The system employs modeling and simulation techniques to forecast the effects of natural hazards on critical infrastructures services.