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DRIVER+ Trial in Netherlands

14.05.2019

DRIVER+ Trial in The Hague puts innovative Crisis Management solutions through their paces

On 22nd to 23rd May 2019, five innovative solutions will be assessed in a flooding scenario in The
Hague, as part of a two-day tabletop Trial conducted by the DRIVER+ project. Although the designed
scenario is admittedly fictional, the selected innovative solutions will be tested in as realistic as
possible operational conditions. With the active participation of practitioners from the police, fire
service, medical services, municipality, military, the Water Authority and electricity company, public
transport as well as international organisations such as EUROPOL, EUROJUST and the International
Court of Justice, this is major event for the assessment of innovative Crisis Management solutions in
Europe.
Since 1997 alone there have been 23 serious floods in Europe, resulting in no less than 802 fatalities.
Going back 66 years, the North Sea Flood of 1953 killed more than 2,551 people and flooded 9% of
all Dutch farmland. In total 1,836 fatalities occurred in The Netherlands alone and the impact of this
particular disaster is still felt today.
With the effects of climate change and the ever-present threat of sea level rise, the Dutch are
leading the way in water and flood management and have been consistently implementing new
solutions to prepare against potential nightmare scenarios.


DRIVER+

DRIVER+(Driving Innovation in Crisis Management for European Resilience) is an EU funded project,
helping Crisis Management practitioners find the best ways to address disasters that require
complex responses. A total of four Trials and a Final Demonstration will take place within the
project’s lifespan, actively involving Crisis Management practitioners in order to identify and assess
innovative solutions that could potentially meet their expectations and cover a series of preidentified
gaps. The two first Trials were successfully conducted in Poland and France, while the final
Trial will take place in Austria in September 2019.
All DRIVER+ Trials are prepared, executed and evaluated in line with the Trial Guidance Methodology
(TGM) with the support of the Test-bed infrastructure and the Trial Guidance Tool (TGT). These three
closely linked components have been specifically developed to assist Trial organisers to conduct a
simulated crisis as realistically as possible. The results of the assessment of the solutions are then
stored in the DRIVER+ Portfolio of Solutions (PoS), an open online database, which also contains
valuable information on other existing solution. The PoS is available to view online at
http://pos.driver-project.eu/.


The Trial

In general terms, The Netherlands Trial will be assessing a number of solutions that are designed to
improve current crisis management capabilities by recognising the interaction between people and
technology and address shortcomings in three specific areas.


1. The planning of resources in the context of large scale and long-term crises.
2. The ability to exchange crisis-related information between various agencies and organisations (interoperability).
3. The planning and managing of large-scale evacuations of population in urban areas,
including the management of the side effects such evacuations can cause.

After a meticulous selection process, five innovative Crisis Management solutions were chosen,
based on their ability to solve a series of gaps identified by practitioners earlier in the project.

The selected solutions are:

  • 3DI from Nelen & Schuurmans (https://www.nelen-schuurmans.nl/). State-of-the-art
    hydrodynamic simulation software for inundation caused by heavy rainfall, overflowing
    rivers or coastal flooding.
  • ZKI & KEEPOPERATIONAL from DLR (https://www.dlr.de). ZKI Provides Up-to-date
    situational awareness information such as satellite or aerial imagery, as well as geo data
    while KEEPOPERATIONAL provides fast and seamless exchange of relevant information for
    traffic management and logistics operations in disaster situations.
  • CrisisSuite from MerlinCrisis (https://www.merlincrisis.com/nl). Delivers a Common
    Operational Picture for those Crisis Teams not having direct access to the Dutch crisis
    management system (LCMS).
  • HUMLOG from the University of Münster (https://www.uni-muenster.de/en/). An adaptable
    simulation environment for discrete event-based and agent-based simulations
  • SIM-CI from SIM-CI (https://sim-ci.com/). Creates a digital visualisation of the disaster and
    shows the cascading effects on critical infrastructure and utility networks.


The tabletop scenario

The objective of the Trial is to evaluate these solutions in a challenging, yet fictional scenario with
the active participation of as many Crisis Management organisations as possible. The Trial will be
conducted as a tabletop exercise simulating a breach of the primary seawall near the lock of
Scheveningen, caused by severe weather conditions. A large part of The Hague city centre will be
flooded as a result, damaging infrastructure and threatening a large portion of the city’s inhabitants.
Cascading effects will include power outage, flooded roads and railway infrastructure, threatening
the population in the affected areas.
Indeed, a crisis on this scale cannot be managed by the Safety Region Haaglanden and its regional
crisis partners alone, and therefore requires the deployment of additional emergency services to
deal with an increasing number of exposed people, as well as to manage all the cascading effects.
Stakeholders (end-users and decision makers) from every crisis management level (local, regional,
national and international level) will play an important part in the Trial. These stakeholders will take
actions in a simulated environment that uses realistic information, based on currently available
assets and resources, crisis management plans, rescue procedures and good practices of
participants. But throughout the DRIVER+ Trial, it is the socio-technical solutions, not the
participants that will be evaluated to see if they can improve the response for practitioners and the
other Crisis Management experts involved.


For more information on The Netherlands Trial or on DRIVER+ activities, please visit our website at
https://www.driver-project.eu