The document summarizes the TRIDEC project which aims to develop new approaches and technologies for intelligent information management in collaborative, complex decision processes for natural crisis management. It describes the evolution of tsunami early warning systems from lightweight to heavyweight demonstrators. The key components of the TRIDEC architecture include an interoperable communication infrastructure, a robust service infrastructure, and a knowledge-based service framework to support tasks like sensor data integration, information dissemination, and collaborative decision making. The project aims to develop standards-based software architectures to connect local tsunami early warning systems into a system of systems.

1. ISOPE-2013 Anchorage Conference
The 23rd International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference
Anchorage, Alaska, USA, June 30−July 5, 2013: www.isope.org; www.isope2013.org
The Evolution of Disaster Early Warning
Systems in the TRIDEC Project
Peter Löwe, Joachim Wächter, Martin Hammitzsch, Matthias Lendholt, Rainer Häner
Centre for GeoinformationTechnology, GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences,
Potsdam, Germany
Jürgen Moßgraber
Fraunhofer IOSB
Karlsruhe, Germany
Zoheir Sabeur
IT Innovation Centre, Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences, University of Southampton
Southampton, United Kingdom

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Collaborative, Complex, and Critical Decision Processes in Evolving Crises
• TRIDEC is a IT Research Project in the European Union’s Framework Programme
(FP7)
• New approaches and technologies for intelligent information management in
collaborative, complex and critical decision processes in earth management.
• This presentation focuses on the architecture developed for natural crisis
management (NCM) and the light-, mid- and heavyweight demonstrators for
Tsunami Early Warning.

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Tsunami Early Warning Systems (TEWS)
TEWS are distributed software and hardware systems supporting
– reliable detection of imminent tsunami hazards,
– rapid situation assessment, and the
– targeted dissemination of customised warning messages.
TEWS infrastructures consist of
• national (National Tsunami Warning
Centre: NTWC); and
• regional warning centres (Regional
Tsunami Watch Centre:RTWC).

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ICT Research and Development Strategy
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) view of
Tsunami Early Warning Systems:
• integrated software- and hardware systems for
• data acquisition,
• decision making and
• information dissemination, which
• support the detection and analyses of imminent hazards and the
dissemination of customised related warnings.

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Predecessor Projects
2005 – 2011
2007 – 2010
2010 – 2013

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German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning
System (GITEWS)
Focus: Sensor data integration
Duration: 2006 – 2011
Funding: German Ministry for Education and
Research (BMBF)
Distant Early Warning System (DEWS)
Focus: Information logistics
Duration: 2007-2010
Funding: EU (FP6)
Predecessor Projects

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Key components
• A communication infrastructure of interoperable services
• A robust and scalable service infrastructure
• A knowledge-based service framework
• An adaptive framework for collaborative decision making

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Architectures and Application Development
• Concept and Design of a reference architecture for tsunami warning
systems based on the TRIDEC service infrastructure
• Application Development
– Establishing a service orchestration platform to support sustainable
crisis management and collaboration workflows
– Specification and implementation of adaptive, autonomous and
intelligent information management
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Spiral Model for Demonstrator Evolution
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Y1 –
Y2 –
Y3 –
Each yearly cycle comprises requirement analysis, design
and development activities followed by test phases to
validate the results repeatedly against the requirements.
Year 1:
Light weight
Demonstrator
Year 2:
Middle weight
Demonstrator
Year 3:
Heavy weight
Demonstrator

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Design of Reference Architecture for Crisis
Management Systems
• Specification of Information Model
• Identification of System Components
• Specification of Interaction Scenarios, Tasks, Choreographies and
Business Processes
• System-of-Systems (SoS) design
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TRIDEC Architecture Overview
• The generic TRIDEC architecture
describes a common layout for the
sub-systems of a System of Systems
to interact via a communication
infrastructure.
• A communication infrastructure
based on a Message-oriented
middleware (MOM) enables
distributed applications and
distributed systems in heterogeneous
environments to communicate by
message exchange. Red triangles: SoS sub-systems with their own
data.

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Generic Architecture Components
Display of the identified generic components for a generic decision support system.
Data Source(s)
1st site
MOM
Data Source(s)
Data Source(s)
Feeder Storage
Historic DataCached Data
Semantic
Registry
Workflow Service
Data Source(s)
Data Source(s)
Processing
Service
Receive
realtime data
Get cached data and
parameters; write results
User Interface
R
Cache / store data
Query
R
Steers
Receive
notifications
R
Invoke &
handle results
RR
Downstream
Dissemination
R
R
Register sensor & request topic

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Architecture for Natural Crisis Management
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Decide & Act
Downstream
• Generation of
customized warning
information
• Dissemination via
different channels
• Control actuators
Decide & Act
• Decision finding based
on context analysis
• Evaluation of
alternatives
• Initiation of warnings
Upstream
• Sensor data
• Context information
• Dynamic analysis

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Natural Crisis Management System Architecture
– Concept
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Upstream / Decide and Act Architecture
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Upstream / Decide & Act:
Light weight and middle-weight systems
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Year 1 Year 2

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Decide and Act / Downstream Architecture
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Service Oriented Architecture for Sensor
Integration (Upstream)

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End User Use Cases Natural Crises Management

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Collaboration for Natural Crises Management

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Roles and Tasks in the TRIDEC System of Systems

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Tasks, Roles, and Conversations
(Collaboration Model and Business Processes)
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Choreography Example

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Tsunami Workflow Example

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Remaining Work
• Extension of the System-of-Systems character (federation of distributed
components, international communication of systems)
• Integrate non-traditional tsunami signal detection approaches
• Leverage intelligent information management
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The road ahead / ICT Megatrends
• Ubiquitous sensing,
• integration of Earth Observation (EO) systems,
• volunteered geographic information (VGI), and
• cloud computing
However, for any kind of early warning system, it will be critical to
prove that the range of functions can also be reliably offered as
cloud-based software services.

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Conclusion
• Information and communication technology (ICT) has become the
driving factor for Tsunami Early Warning Systems (TEWS).
• IT concepts such as service-based architecture (SOA), system of
systems (SoS), middleware and semantic services enable standards-
based software infrastructures for national and regional TEWS.
• The TRIDEC software framework is used for local TEWS instances in
the North East Atlantic / Mediterranean (NEAM) region to be
connected in a system of systems.

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Thank you for your attention