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Handling Emergency Management in Object OrientedModelling Environment

Berna Eren Tokgoz; Volkan Cakir; Adrian V. Gheorghe

Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Old Dominion University,Norfolk, VA, USA.

e-mail: berentok@odu.edu

Abstract. It has been understood that protection of a nation from extreme disasters is a challengingtask. Impacts of extreme disasters on a nation's critical infrastructures, economy and society couldbe devastating. A protection plan itself would not be sufficient when a disaster strikes. Hence, thereis a need for a holistic approach to establish more resilient infrastructures to withstand extremedisasters. A resilient infrastructure can be defined as a system or facility that is able to withstanddamage, but if affected, can be readily and cost-effectively restored. The key issue to establishresilient infrastructures is to incorporate existing protection plans with comprehensive preparednessactions to respond, recover and restore as quickly as possible, and to minimize extreme disasterimpacts. Although national organizations will respond to a disaster, extreme disasters need to behandled mostly by local emergency management departments. Since emergency managementdepartments have to deal with complex systems, they have to have a manageable plan and efficientorganizational structures to coordinate all these systems. A strong organizational structure is the keyin responding fast before and during disasters, and recovering quickly after disasters. In this study,the entire emergency management is viewed as an enterprise and modelled through enterprisemanagement approach. Managing an enterprise or a large complex system is a very challengingtask. It is critical for an enterprise to respond to challenges in a timely manner with quick decisionmaking. This study addresses the problem of handling emergency management at regional level inan object oriented modelling environment developed by use of TopEase® software. EmergencyOperation Plan of the City of Hampton, Virginia, has been incorporated into TopEase® for analysis.The methodology used in this study has been supported by a case study on critical infrastructureresiliency in Hampton Roads.

J. INTRODUCTION

Hampton Roads consists of sixteen city andcounty jurisdictions, and is home to 1.6 millionpeople (the fifth largest metro area in thesouth eastern U.S. and the second largestmetro area between Washington, D.C. andAtlanta). Hampton Roads is very critical fornational security both militarily andeconomically, because it has the largestcomplex of military bases in the world and thesecond-largest port on the Atlantic coast, andit is the site of the world's largest shipbuilderof combat vessels. Hampton Roads is low­lying and thus prone to flooding, is vulnerableto the effects of hurricanes and occasionallytornadoes, and is a likely target for terroristattacks. It is obvious that protection plans arenot enough after a disaster strikes to theregion. Thus, there is a need for a holisticapproach to establish more resilientinfrastructures to withstand extreme disasters.A resilient infrastructure can be defined as acomponent, system or facility that is able towithstand damage or disruption, but ifaffected, can be readily and cost-effectivelyrestored. The key issue to achieve this is to

incorporate existing protection plans withcomprehensive preparedness actions torespond, recover and restore as quickly aspossible, and to minimize extreme disasterimpacts [1]. Therefore, Critical InfrastructureResilience of Hampton Roads Region(CIRHRR) project, which was funded byDepartment of Homeland Security, has beendone to analyze the regional resiliency interms of four critical infrastructures; namelyelectricity, transportation, communicationsand water sectors. Service interruption of anyone or more of these interdependentinfrastructures due to various threats could becatastrophic not only for the region but alsofor the entire nation.

Extreme disasters, both natural andmanmade, must be handled by each city'semergency management departments. It isimportant to have a manageable plan which isprepared by emergency managementdepartments before disasters. Sinceemergency management departments have todeal with other complex and large scalesystems such as plant managements, publicutilities, fire department and police

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department, they have to have efficient andeffective organizational structures tocoordinate all these systems. A strongorganizational structure is the key inresponding fast before and during disasters,and recovering quickly after disasters. In orderto establish strong emergency managementand organizational structures for cities, anenterprise management approach can beuseful. Managing an enterprise or largecomplex system is a very challenging taskbecause of rapid technological changes,complex economic dynamics and adaptationto new markets, trends and opportunities. It iscritical for enterprises to respond to thesechallenges in a timely manner with quickdecision making. TopEase® is a software toolwhich provides managers the necessarycritical information on an enterprise itself tovisualize a holistic picture of a complexsystem such as an emergency serviceproviding enterprise [2]. TopEase® has beendeveloped by a Swiss Company, PulincoEngineering AG, to provide a methodology fora holistic view of a system to manage itscomplexity, to get transparency, and to controlthe change and/or transformation processesfor continuous improvement and success. It isdesigned to handle "business processes" andprovides a desirable end state of anenterprise, business or application whilehighlighting the gap between the current "asis" and desired "to be" states. Therefore, anapproach based on TopEase® has been usedin the CIRHRR project. The goal of thisapplication was to show that emergencymanagement operations can be handled asenterprise management processes. In order toachieve this goal, Emergency Operation Plan(EOP) of the City of Hampton, Virginia hasbeen implemented into TopEase®. In thispaper, some examples and TopEase®implementation process are presented.TopEase® models emergency managementat regional level in an object orientedenvironment. Hence, Object OrientedProgramming (OOP) will be briefly explainedin the next section.

II. OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING

"Objects" are used to design applications andcomputer programs in OOP. OOP can useseveral concepts or techniques frompreviously established paradigms such asinheritance, modularity, polymorphism orencapsulation. These concepts give supportto the development of efficient classstructures. The aim of OOP is to approximatethe behaviour of real world elements withinsoftware environment [3]. In OOP, each object

is capable of receiving messages, processingdata and sending messages to other objects.Each object can be viewed as an independentunit with a distinct role or responsibility. Someof the key concepts of OOP are describednext:

Class defines the abstract characteristics of athing (its attributes or properties) and thethings it can do (its behavior).

Object is a particular instance of a class, andis a software package that includes all thenecessary data and procedures to represent areal world object for a specific set ofpurposes.

Message Passing signifies the objectsinteracting with each other by sendingrequests for services known as messages.

Encapsulation is the mechanism by whichrelated data and procedures are boundtogether within an object. It conceals the exactdetails of how a particular class works fromobjects that use its code or send messages toit.

Polymorphism is the behavior that variesdepending on the class in which the behavioris invoked, that is, two or more classes canreact differently to the same message. Thepower of polymorphism is that it greatlysimplifies the logic of programs by shorteningand increasing the execution speed.

Inheritance is the mechanism that allowsclasses to be defined as special cases, orsubclasses, of each other [2], [4].

The approach used by TopEase® isexplained in the next section.

III. TOPEASE® SOFTWARE AND ITSAPPROACH

TopEase®, which has been used for morethan 20 years as a business application tool,aims to provide solutions to the problems ofvariety of sectors such as economic, healthand law enforcement. TopEase® helpsmanage the complexity of a system, see theholistic aspects of a system and control itsprocesses at every step to achieve continuousimprovements in the system. The idea behinddeveloping this software was to establishbalance between principles and pragmatism.TopEase® uses 1-3-5-7 axioms to achievesolutions for businesses (Figure 1).

1 methodology provides a commonunderstanding based on an establishedterminology. TopEase® uses a singlemethodology, which pursues principals in apragmatic and balanced manner toaccomplish its targets.

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3 layers assist in obtaining a target audiencerelated business structure. 3 layers arenamed as definition, support andimplementation layers.

5 models provide a system to be modelled,documented and elaborated. The system maybe validated through value chains andquestions, if all artifacts are modelledappropriately. 5 models are named asbusiness, resource. information, delivery andchange models.

7 questions help analyze and interpretconnections between 3 layers and 5 models.It is important to ask 7 significant questions todetermine interrelationships among nodeswhich are constructed models. Thesequestions are about cost, benefit, risk, quality,feasibility [produce (how)], manageability[people (who)] and impact.

Figure 1: 1-3-5-7 approach used byTopEase® [2)

recovery plan for Hampton Roads, there is aneed for an integrated regional model for allbranches of jurisdictions and private facilitiesinvolved. Facilities in all jurisdictions,relationships among them and theirdependencies on private facilities have beenanalyzed to determine response and recoverycapabilities of these jurisdictions duringemergency situations.

B. Hampton City Emergency Model

Hampton Roads has unique characteristics asa region. Existence of multiple jurisdictions,privately owned utility companies and militaryfacilities require an analytical solution throughthe application of the system of systemtechnology. This seems to be adequate foraddressing issues of emergency situations. Inorder to analyze the current state ofemergency plan, the EOP of the City ofHampton has been implemented intoTopEase® as part of the CIRHRR project.Critical infrastructures have been modelled aslayers (Figure 2). Functions of theseintegrated critical infrastructures andemergency operations against differentthreats are cross cutting issues as can beseen in Figure 3. The purpose of this studywas to put the EOP of the City of Hampton ina single model to see the interdependenciesamong critical infrastructures.

....... ------ ...) .. 8 ..... )1 .... ~ 'It. ... __ .. til~ •• t-. -tt-.·.-.· __ ·· ;- .C1~"_0. _ ., ..(..-.:,;..,..

• 6

"Problem definition and methodology used inthe CIRHRR project are presented in the nextsection.

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A. Critical Infrastructure Resilience ofHampton Roads Region Project

In order to enhance regional security andresiliency of Hampton Roads, a complex setof management and policy issues are requiredto be addressed. Diverse local jurisdictionsand the range of federal, commonwealth andprivate facilities serving the region complicatethe analysis and coordination of regionalsecurity and reliability. In order to establish aregional disaster mitigation, response and

Figure 2: Critical infrastructures as layers

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-0_ '·th,.....

u,dJ'C...rru~....",_tlA., ..

Lq\n1.krk""t)-0. \ .......... ,_·n.....

Figure 3: Critical infrastructures and threatsassociated with them

ANDDEFINITIONIV. PROBLEMMETHODOLOGY

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As the first step, the organizational chart ofHampton City Management has beenincorporated into TopEase® RACI(Responsible, Accountable, Concerned andInformed) matrix as detailed as in the EOP ofthe City of Hampton. The RACI matrixevaluates and maps the characteristics andresponsibilities of various positions in theorganizational chart. Hence, RACI helpsmapping of all artifacts which allow describingand analyzing the entire organizationalmapping, influence, and most importantly,interdependencies. Part of the RACI matrixoutput can be seen in Figure 4.

defined in TopEase® by two parameterswhich are impact and likelihood. Categories ofimpact and likelihood are given in Tables 1and 2, respectively. In our study, risk ofhaving a disaster can be assigned to anyoperation or critical infrastructure to calculatethe total risk of that disaster. This assignedrisk can be represented in different ways suchas using a risk matrix or interdependencydiagram. For instance, likelihoods of havingdifferent types of disasters versus impacts ofthese disasters on a nuclear power plant arevisualized as a risk map in Figure 6.

Figure 4: Example of the RACI matrix output

Table 2: Impact severity categories

Table 1: Likelihood ranking categories

V. CONCLUSION

General Frequency Probabilityof of a One-

Reoccurring off EventEvents

Improbable Once every 1 in 1,00010,000 years

Remote Once every 1 in 1001,000 years

Occasional Once every 1 in 10100 years

Probable Once every More likely10 years than not

Frequent Once every Almostyear certain

As part of our efforts to obtain a holistic viewof the EOP of the City of Hampton, this planhas been incorporated into TopEase® as asingle model. TopEase® was developed for"business process" solutions based on OOPparadigm. The main idea behindimplementing the EOP into TopEase® was toapproach emergency management operationsas a "business process" and to define critical

Descriptive Safety SecurityMinor Minor Minor

injuries breachreaulations

Moderate Major Reportableinjuries breach of

reaulationsSignificant Single Prosecution

fatalitySubstantial Multiple

fatalities(tens)

Mega Multiplefatalities(hundreds)

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,-----. "-

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..... _ ...~._ .. 300'::

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•Figure 5: Visualization of processes, activities

and roles

Processes including detailed activities,lifecycle of emergency operations and theiractivities from origination to termination havebeen adapted directly from the EOP of theCity of Hampton. Since full representation isimpossible, partial representation ofprocesses and activities along with assignedpeople, jobs and roles are visualized in Figure5. TopEase® can be used to generate chartsand diagrams that show complex andinterconnected components of a system.

Risk catalogue function of TopEase® canhandle all kinds of risk to the system. Risk is

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infrastructures as different layers in a singlemodel. Other functions of TopEase® havealso been used in the model in order toincorporate every detail of the EOP into asingle model. For example, definitions in theEOP have been incorporated into the modelvia a glossary function. References and lawshave also been included in the model. Inaddition, governmental partners like FEMAthat are outside system boundaries have beenidentified and incorporated into the model asexternal agents. These functions altogetherwill provide ways of understanding the effectsof interdependencies for determiningvulnerable parts of the system.As a future study, EOPs of other jurisdictionscould be modeled to be able to makecomparisons among jurisdictions to see theirinterdependencies. Such an analysis willprovide the opportunity to evaluate vulnerablepoints of jurisdictions and to give decisionmakers an idea to use limited resourceseffectively. In addition, TopEase® has "as-is"and "to-be" functions which will be useful forcomparative analysis and for coordinating thetransition between "as-is" and "to-be" states.

As part of future study, impact analysis featureof TopEase® could be used to identifyvulnerable points of critical infrastructures. It ispossible to develop different threat scenariosin TopEase® to see how the system reactsunder stress. As a powerful feature, anychanges in an enterprise such as changes insystem parameters, or presence or absenceof a process can be tracked by the impactanalysis. It is possible to analyze how anunexpected failure in part of a criticalinfrastructure can affect other infrastructuresby using the impact analysis. This type ofanalysis can help emergency managers seeall possible interdependencies among criticalinfrastructures.

Figure 6: Risk map for a nuclear power plant

VI. REFERENCES1. Scalingi, P. L., "Moving' beyond CriticalInfrastructure Protection to DisasterResilience," Critical Thinking: Moving fromInfrastructure Protection to InfrastructureResilience, CIP Program Discussion PaperSeries, George Mason University, 2007.

2. Pulfer, R. & Schmid, U. (2006) "ControlYour Business: The Balance betweenPrinciples and Pragmatism," PulincoEngineering AG.

3. Agostini M.N., Decker, I.C, & Silveira eSilva, A. (2007) "A new approach for thedesign of electric power system softwareusing object oriented modeling," ElectricalPower and Energy Systems, vol. 29, pp. 505­513.

4. Gossain, S. & Anderson, D. B. (1999) "Anobject oriented approach to VLSI routing," lEEColloquium on Applications of OOP, pp.6/1­6/4.