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Crisis and disaster management has become an important research field in GIS during recent years. Risk assessment and situation picture-related work are particularly important areas of interest. There are distinct phases in different crises; these can be roughly divided into mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. In this paper a general classification of methods in each phase is given with examples on recent or ongoing research projects. The framework is based on literature and experiences from crisis and disaster-related exercises. Three case studies are based on those exercises. The goal is to clarify the role and usability of various GI-supported methods in the crisis management process by outlining a theoretical framework and presenting examples of the developed methods. Continuously increasing amount of spatially related geographic information is a huge potential to the GI analysis and modeling methods; the concept of digital earth is the underlying mainstream that gives lots of promise to the research and development work in this field.

BackgroundCritical infrastructure (CI) covers the structures and functions that modern societies require to operate continuously. Failures in these infrastructures may cause substantial undesired consequences in other services due to the high degree of interconnectivity of services. Therefore the continuous operation of these services is essential even during a severe failure situations. This study proposes an approach for identifying the vulnerable interdependencies between critical infrastructure (CI) networks so that the resilience of the CI can be improved. The study focuses on the electricity distribution, telecommunications and IT infrastructures.MethodsThe study was conducted during the years of 2014 and 2015 for National Emergency Supply Agency in Finland. The study included six workshops where the material was collected based on threat scenario and verified by the participating CI companies that constitute the regional preparedness committees.ResultsIn order to find the potential vulnerable interconnections the following approach was introduced: a) collect and structure expert knowledge related to essential activities and failure types, b) analyse the data and create causalities, c) model the relevant influence chains and d) identify the local preparedness requirements. The approach assist also in identifying and creating decision support analysis such as geographical vulnerability analysis.ConclusionsThe suggested approach provides consistent approach for identifying the critical CI interconnections and preparedness requirements. The benefits of the approach include the creation of common understanding of the interdependencies, establishing common concepts and introducing a systematic approach for identifying and managing the CI interconnections. The benefit of the approach for the CI service providers is the improved business continuity that is achieved by creating comprehensive understanding of the preparedness requirements.