Submission 123 of ISCRAM 2012 conference: Integrating National Tsunami Early Warning Systems towards Ocean-Wide System-of-Systems Networks

1. Integrating National Tsunami Early
Warning Systems towards Ocean-Wide
System-of-Systems Networks
Matthias Lendholt [1], Martin Hammitzsch [1], Miguel A. Esbri [2]
[1] German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), Germany
[2] ATOS Research, Spain

2. Motivation
• Increasing number of national tsunami early warning systems (TEWS)
• Increasing number of Crisis Management Information Systems (CIMS)
• Research about information systems
Do we design + develop + implement + deploy interoperable information
systems that are capable of system to system communication?
Or do we create more and more isolated islands?

3. Overview
• Introduction
• Challenge
• Results
• Reference implementation
• Outlook

4. UNESCO Tsunami Programme
• UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) Tsunami
Programme:
o Objective: The IOC Tsunami Programme aims at reducing the loss of lives and
livehoods that could be produced worldwide by tsunamis.
o Four Intergovernmental Coordination Groups (ICG) corresponding to the
regions Pacific, Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Mediterranean have been
established to address particular regional needs

5. UNESCO Tsunami Programme
• Main objective IOC Tsunami Programme: The integration of national TEWS
to ensure information exchange during tsunami events.
 ICG Implementation plans
• IOC ICG/IOTWS, 2008: Implementation Plan
“… the establishment of a coordinated regional warning system for the entire
Indian Ocean basin, through the establishment of a network of National inter-
operable Warning Centres.”

6. ICG Implementation plan
• Goal: develop systems-of-systems
o Based on Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)
• Legal aspects
• Workflows
o Standardized ICG warning products (bulletins)
• Content: What, Where, When
• Format: Plain ASCII text designed for FAX transmission
• No protocols, technologies, encodings
o Standardized ICG spatial reference schemas
• Coastal Forecast Zones
• Coastal Forecast Points

7. ICG/IOTWS Coastal Forecast Zones
• Coastal Forecast Zones (CFZ) introduced to ensure interoperability
between TEWS

8. Challenge
• Develop a communication model to interlink/integrate national TEWS:
1. According to UNESCO IOC guidelines
2. Accounting UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR)
recommendations
3. Based on standards of the emergency management domain
4. Applying system-of-systems engineering
• Best practices / design philosophy:
o Keep it simple
o No proprietary technology
o Open standards, open source software

9. Information gathering
 What are the needs and requirements?
 Which information must/must not be shared?
 Which technologies must/must not be used?
• Experiences from preceding projects
o GITEWS (German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System)
• Literature work
o IOC / ICG guidelines, implementation plans, …
o ISDR recommendations
o Other TEWS related research
o Crisis Information Management Systems (CIMS) in general
• Survey among experts
o Questionnaires, Interviews, …

10. General
public Legal Aspects
§§§
Cultural
background,
capacity
building
Operators Technologies

11. Identified Workflows
1. National Centres (NC) share sensor observations
2. Wide Area Centre (WAC) runs ocean wide tsunami simulation
3. WAC sends warning messages (IOC bulletins) to NCs
Wide Area Centre

12. National Centres
National Centre
National Centre Thailand
Sri Lanka
National Centre
Indonesia

13. Wide Area Centre Infrastructure
National Centre
National Centre Thailand
Sri Lanka
National Centre
Indonesia
Wide Area Centre

14. Earthquake Event
National Centre
National Centre Thailand
Sri Lanka
National Centre
Indonesia
Wide Area Centre

15. Observation by NC
National Centre
National Centre Thailand
Sri Lanka
National Centre
Indonesia
Wide Area Centre

16. Dissemination on National Level
National Centre
National Centre Thailand
Sri Lanka
National Centre
Indonesia
Wide Area Centre

17. Sending observations to WAC
National Centre
National Centre Thailand
Sri Lanka
National Centre
Indonesia
Wide Area Centre

18. Forwarding to NCs
National Centre
National Centre Thailand
Sri Lanka
National Centre
Indonesia
Wide Area Centre

19. Running ocean wide tsunami forecast
 IOC bulletin
National Centre
National Centre Thailand
Sri Lanka
National Centre
Indonesia
Wide Area Centre

20. Delivery of warnings to NCs
National Centre
National Centre Thailand
Sri Lanka
National Centre
Indonesia
Wide Area Centre

21. Dissemination on National Level
National Centre
National Centre Thailand
Sri Lanka
National Centre
Indonesia
Wide Area Centre

22. Information Encoding
1. Sensor Observation exchange
 SWE (Sensor Web Enablement) messages
• XML
• OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) Standard
• Used by GITEWS and many others sensor related information systems
2. Ocean wide bulletins
 CAP (Common Alerting Protocol)
• XML
• OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards)
• Widely used in Canada, US and Australia
3.Envelope / addressing
 EDXL-DE (Emergency Data Exchange Language-Distribution Element)
• XML
• OASIS

23. Example message: EDXL-DE envelope
<EDXLDistribution xmlns='urn:oasis:names:tc:…'>
<distributionID>urn:org:dews_online:WAC.IO:CAP6_1</distributionID>
<senderID>urn:org:dews_online:WAC.IO</senderID>
<dateTimeSent>2011-03-10T17:50:28.202+00:00</dateTimeSent>
<distributionStatus>Actual</distributionStatus>
<distributionType>Report</distributionType>
<keyword>
<valueListUrn>http://www.dews-online.org/urn/c2c</valueListUrn>
<value>BULLETIN</value>
</keyword>
<contentObject>
<contentDescription>CAP message generated by DEWS WAC.IO</…>
<incidentID>urn:org:dews_online:WAC.IO:6</incidentID>
<incidentDescription>Tsunami Warning</incidentDescription>
<xmlContent>
<embeddedXMLContent>
<alert xmlns='urn:oasis:names:tc:emergency:cap:1.1' xmlns:xsi='…'>
<!-- CAP payload with Tsunami bulletin embedded here-->
</alert>
</embeddedXMLContent>
…

24. <alert>
…
<info>
<category>Safety</category>
<event>TsunamiWarning</event>
<responseType>Shelter</responseType>
<urgency>Future</urgency>
<severity>Severe</severity>
<certainty>Likely</certainty>
<onset>2011-04-24T21:18:15.015+00:00</onset>
<senderName>urn:org:fosslab:centre:WAC.IO</senderName>
<parameter>
<valueName>MinTimeOfArrival</valueName>
<value>2011-04-24T21:18:15+0000</value>
</parameter>
<parameter>
<valueName>MaxSeaSurfaceHeight</valueName>
<value>1.81</value>
</parameter>
<area>
<areaDesc>QUILON</areaDesc>
<geocode>
<valueName>EX_BOX_ID</valueName>
<value>19</value>
</geocode>
</area>
</info>
</alert>

25. Reference Implementation
• Messaging:
o Asynchronous communication
o Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
o Apache Active MQ
• GUI Client
o Command and Control User Interface (CCUI)
o Eclipse Rich Client Platform (programming language: Java)
• Encodings
o XML Schema + Java XML Beans

29. Participation at IOWave 10/2011 in Jakarta

30. Conclusion
• Simple and robust communication model
o Follows UNESCO IOC/ICG guidelines
o Accounts UN/ISDR recommendations
o Based on open standards (OGC, OASIS)
o Reference implementation
• Open source MOM
• Standard compliant (xml schema)
• Tested/Validated at IOC exercise
• Deployment is not a technological problem
o Longsome decision processes on high levels (political processes)
o Development of information systems not driven by IT experts

31. Outlook
• TRIDEC: EU project focussing on TEWS in Mediterranean
o Project partner: Turkey – system is running there
o Cooperation with ICG/NEAMTWS
o Evaluation which countries are interested to participate
• Indonesia: Evaluation of the system with real data
• Convince IOC/ICGs to rely on open standards (Cap, EDXL)
• Long term: official IOC CAP profile for tsunami bulletins

32. Thank you!
matthias.lendholt@gfz-potsdam.de
www.gfz-potsdam.de
Acknowledgements
DEWS project www.dews-online.org
Funded in FP6, 2007-2010
TRIDEC project www.tridec-online.eu
Funded in FP7, 2010-2013