José Fernando Esteban Lauzan from Atos Origin who is the coordinator for the Orchestra project provides an insight into this integrated project to help with risk and disaster management in Europe
The increasing number of natural disasters, as well as the associated number of victims and economic losses, has demonstrated to the European Union the paramount importance of avoiding and mitigating natural hazards in order to protect citizens, the environment and critical infrastructures. Therefore, risk and disaster management activities are not a choice but a must for European Member States and the EU.
In addition, although these activities have a positive impact on the quality of life of citizens, on the European economy and other important aspects, it is important to keep in mind that the ultimate goal and main driver for the actors involved in this field is to help save lifes.
If we are considering a field whose main objective is out of discussion, and where the motivation of involved actors (in the public and private sector) is equally guaranteed, Where does the main challenge reside? In a nutshell, actors involved in the management of natural or human-originated risks cannot cooperate efficiently due to organisational and technological barriers.
This problem is complex due to:
· the number of authorities and public and private bodies involved at different administrative levels,
· multi-linguality,
· accessibility and availability of required information,
· technical interoperability (lack of use of standards),
· common terminology & use of semantic technologies,
· procedures & policies,
· multiplicity of business models
ORCHESTRA (Open Architecture and Spatial Data Infrastructure for Risk Management) is an Integrated Project co-funded by the European Commission’s Information Society Technology (IST) research programme. The overall goal of ORCHESTRA (http://www.eu-orchestra.org/) is the design, implementation and demonstration in real scenarios of an open, service-oriented software architecture as a key contribution to overcome the interoperability problems in the domain of multi-risk management in Europe.
When addressing interoperability, we may differentiate the ICT side from the organisational side. Nowadays, organisations are dependent on their ICT systems in order to achieve their goals efficiently, and – in general – ICT systems were not designed to work together. As a result, organisations often operate as “islands of information”.
In consequence, one major technological objective is to achieve technical interoperability. That is, to have ICT systems that are able to automatically exchange information efficiently. And this objective must be achieved by respecting existing (legacy) systems, due to the investments already made by many actors during decades.
There are initiatives and activities that are already working in this direction (the INSPIRE Directive, the GMES initiative, the GEOSS initiative, projects such as ORCHESTRA) with promising results.
Once (and while) relevant information is readily available and accessible, and technical interoperability is fully achieved, we may concentrate on the organisational aspects for which ICT is merely the substrate.
It is expected that as organisations become increasingly interoperable (at system level), the enhanced information exchange and collaboration with other organisations in Europe will favour the spontaneous change of procedures and policies towards more efficient European risk and disaster management activities (protocols for common work, communication, workflows, joint decision making, etc.). It is also expected that ICT solutions contribute to reduce the reluctancy of some organisations to grant data or information access to other organisations, since such solutions can also lower or eliminate some barriers that organisations perceive in this respect (managed access, respect of ownership and business models, etc).
From a social perspective, improved collaboration and performance of public and private actors results in better services and improved quality of life for the citizens. From a business perspective, this on-going process represents a good opportunity for European ICT companies, and in particular for SME’s. Increased interoperability leads to the emergence of an associated ICT market mainly based on innovation, and where knowledge is the key. A wide range of subjects in the scientific, technical and organisational domains must be covered, with each of the specific subjects needing in-depth knowledge and experience, which often a specialised SME is in the best position to provide.
These principles were main drivers for the ORCHESTRA consortium leaded by Atos Origin, which aimed at providing a sound technological solution for lack of interoperability in risk management while fostering the emergence of a European service market in the field.
After four years of work, there are key results that make a difference and which the ORCHESTRA consortium is making publicly available:
- The Reference Model for the ORCHESTRA Architecture (RM-OA) provides a specification framework for system architects, information modellers and system developers. The ORCHESTRA Architecture is a platform-neutral (abstract) specification of the informational and functional aspects of service networks taking into account and evolving out of architectural standards and service specifications of ISO, OGC, W3C and OASIS.
- The ORCHESTRA Services, which are the building blocks for applications, can be broadly divided in two groups: ORCHESTRA Architecture (OA) Services and ORCHESTRA Thematic (OT) Services
- Selected ORCHESTRA software components and tools will soon be available free of charge and under open source licenses, so that future ORCHESTRA-based developments do not have to start from scratch.
- A number of interactive on-line Training Units provide an introduction to ORCHESTRA as well as dedicated guidelines to understanding and adopting ORCHESTRA, e.g. Introduction to service oriented architectures and standards, How to build an ORCHESTRA Service Network, How to apply the ORCHESTRA methodology to new Use Cases, etc. The practical and hands-on experience achieved within the four pilot implementations in ORCHESTRA has been invaluable. An effort has been made to condense the most relevant findings into information contained in the on-line training units.
- The ORCHESTRA Book, designed as a powerful tool to present the key project ideas, experiences and results to readers of both non-technical and technical backgrounds.
These results are available at the project website (http://www.eu-orchestra.org/publications.shtml). There are other more specific items that may be offered for research or other purposes, upon request to the project coordinator.
The ORCHESTRA Architecture has reached Best Practice status at OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium), the standards organisation for geospatial information. It is now being applied to the tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean within project DEWS.
José Fernando Esteban Lauzan, Operations Manager at Atos Origin, Spain. He is the Coordinator of Orchestra.
