Civil Protection Plan: a new GIS tool for an emergency infomation management

An effective emergency planning and management strategy may be developed integrating risk assessment procedures and methodologies able to get over critical situations. In this latter circumstance, emergency situations may be managed by Civil Protection plans, able to set lines of intervention for people safeguard, to allocate resources, to exploit the best available information technology, and to form professional figures, essential to overcome crisis situations (Alexander, 1998 and 2000, Drabek and Hoetmer, 1991). About 90% of emergencies are defined as "routine"; only 10% are extraordinary and they need alternative and special approaches. Therefore, from a theoretical point of view, a methodological framework for emergency planning and management has to include two different modules: a common part to cope with every critical situation, and an "ad hoc" improvisation component for managing the extraordinary part of the emergency situation (Foster 1980, Daines 1991). The real possibility to protect and save people and resources is strictly tied up to the capability to predict, within a pre-established hazard and risk scenario, the potential impact of a natural or anthropic damaging event. This may be accomplished by the following five-step procedure: 1. identify the dangerous event which the area and its community may face; 2. profile the potentially destructive event; 3. inventory the assets; 4. estimate the physical effects due to the impact; 5. estimate the social and economic consequences. Moreover, decisions have to be made and actions taken according to the way the risks are perceived. In effect, the real risk may be very different from perceived risk, given that human behaviour changes in relation to the contingent critical state; as a consequence, standardization of people attitude in an emergency situation could not be defined in a uniform and rigorous way. Different necessities have to be integrated in an emergency plan: o safety and protection of people and care of the injured; o mobilization of personnel and resources; o management of interventions and first aid activities; o recovery of primary public services; o assessment of damage and communication.