SimSinistre: a platform for civil protection exercises

Collaborators

Center RISC (Notre-Dame-de-Foy Campus)

Quebec Civil Security Association 

ESRI Canada

Funding

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) College and Community Social Innovation Fund (CSCSIF)

Objectives

The SimSinistre platform will integrate an innovative geographic approach that will enable civil security responders to carry out tabletop exercises that are better adapted to the context of climate change and the growing extent of the territory affected by a disaster. It will make tabletop exercises more concrete and interactive. Exercise results will also be easy to analyze, enabling the rapid feedback essential to responders.

Methodology

Stage 1: Reflection on tabletop exercises in civil protection

This first step is achieved by conducting and analyzing qualitative semi-structured interviews with a dozen civil protection practitioners.

Step 2: Design and conduct a traditional tabletop exercise

This stage is carried out in collaboration with ASCQ and CNDF study programs (fire safety, police techniques, prehospital emergency services). It allows us to develop and carry out a complete tabletop exercise, including a typical scenario highlighting the challenges faced by emergency responders during a disaster.

Step 3: Planning the transfer of the exercise to geospatial mode

This step establishes a plan for transferring the tabletop exercise to geospatial mode, which will serve as the foundation for the SimSinistre platform. Based on the information obtained and the needs identified in the previous steps, an inventory and selection of relevant data, required functionalities and software platforms consistent with the objectives and expected results is carried out in planning the transition to the geospatial platform.

Step 4: Development of a SimSinistre platform prototype

Based on the established transfer plan, this step consists of adapting the exercise from step 2 to transpose it appropriately into virtual space using geospatial technologies and data. The disaster (magnitude and extent), its consequences and impacts (infrastructures and populations affected, at risk or vulnerable) and the elements relating to emergency measures (setting up the emergency operations center on site, deployment and movement of resources, response) are transposed into a spatial framework established by geospatial elements (relief, hydrography, land use, roads and infrastructures, built environment, etc.). The necessary geospatial data are then integrated, and the functionalities and dashboards are programmed into the technological environment so that the exercise can be run from the platform.

Step 5: Prototype validation

This stage consists of testing and validating the prototype developed by carrying out the same exercise as in stage 2, but on the new geospatial platform.

Equipments

Geographic information systems
Open database
Python programming
ETL tools

Domain

Transport and logistics