Improving emergency preparedness with simulation of cascading events scenarios

Natural or man-made disasters can trigger other negative events leading to tremendous increase of fatalities and damages. In case of Low Probability High consequences events, decision makers are faced with very difficult choices and the availability of a tool to support emergency decisions would be very much beneficial. Within EU CRISMA project a concept model and tool for evaluating cascading effects into scenario-based analyses was implemented. This paper describes the main concepts of the model and demonstrates its application with reference to two earthquake-triggered CE scenarios, including (the first) the falling of an electric cable, ignition and spreading of forest fire and (the second) the happening of a second earthquake in a sequence. Time dependent seismic vulnerability of buildings and population exposure are also considered for updating impact estimation during an earthquake crisis.