Demands to and experience with the Decision Support System RODOS for offsite emergency management in

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Demands to and experience with the Decision
Support System RODOS for off-site emergency
management in the decision making process in
Germany

• Wolfgang Raskob (FZK)
• Valentin Bertsch, Jutta Geldermann (University of
  Karlsruhe)
• Sandra Baig, Florian Gering
• (Federal Office for Radiation Protection )

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Layout of the presentation

• Some words about the RODOS system
• Workshops exploring the applicability of the
  system and in particular its evaluation component
  Web-HIPRE
• What have we learned from the workshops

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Key features of RODOS
Real-time On-line Decision Support System for
multi-user operation in national/regional
emergency centres responsible for off-site
nuclear emergency management

• RODOS provides continuously updated
  comprehensive, consistent and timely information
  as input to decision-making
• in local / national / regional / European scales
• in the early and later phases of an accident
• on all types of emergency actions and
  countermeasures

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Information processing in RODOS
simulation of radiological situation
simulation of countermeasure strategies and
consequences
evaluation of countermeasure strategies
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Need for ranking ?

• Food countermeasures
• 12 single measures and up to 30 sensible
  combinations
• Decontamination options
• 14 single options (combinations are under
  development)
• Relocation
• Temporary or permanent
• Information on radiological, economical (partly)
  and feasibility (partly) aspects available from
  RODOS
• But there is a clear need to include other
  aspects (e.g. political) and further opinions
  (stakeholders) in the decision making process

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Decision making in the context of emergency
management

• Resolving conflicting objectives, setting
  priorities and building consensus for the various
  perspectives of the many stakeholder groups
• Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) helps to
  ensure transparency during the decision making
  process
• The multi-criteria evaluation tool Web-HIPRE
  offers suitable preference elicitation methods
• The underlying MAVT (Multi-Attribute Value
  Theory) is a MCDA framework that provides methods
  to structure and analyse problems by means of
  attribute trees and to elicit the relative
  importance of the criteria in such a tree
• This method was tested within scenario focused
  workshops

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Scenario focused Workshops

• Many parties with different views and
  responsibilities are involved in the decision
  making process
• Scenario-focused workshops involving key
  stakeholders are conducted as emergency exercises
  using moderation methods
• The moderators responsibility is to lead the
  discussion in the workshops

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A hypothetical accident scenario was used as case
study for the evaluation of agricultural measures

• Meteorological and Radiological situation
• Serious accident with immediate shutdown of the
  reactor
• Starting four hours after the accident, release
  lasts for three hours
• The radioactive cloud passed mainly agricultural
  areas
• Heavy precipitation resulted in local
  inhomogeneities of the contamination
• Immediate Response
• All necessary immediate and early countermeasures
  were initiated including early food
  countermeasures

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The problem structuring results in an attribute
tree
Legend no action no action disp disposal (of
the produced milk) proc processing (of
milk) stor storage rmov, T0 removal of cows
from contaminated feed at time T0, feeding
with uncontaminated feed rmov, Tgt0 removal of
cows from contaminated feed at time Tgt0,
feeding with uncontaminated feed rduc, T0
animals get uncontaminated / less contaminated
feed addSproc adding of concentrates to the
food to reduce the activity concentration (of
milk and meat) and subsequent processing
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The composite priorities show the overall ranking
of the alternatives and the contributions of the
criteria
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A sensitivity analysis on the weight of
acceptanceallows to gain deeper insight
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Feedback and what we have learned (1)

• Emergency situations necessitate a coherent and
  effective emergency management involving complex
  decisions
• Conflicting objectives must be resolved and
  priorities must be set
• Perspectives of many stakeholder groups must be
  brought into some form of consensus
• The feedback of applying RODOS including
  Web-HIPRE was very positive in general
• The transparency of the decision was particularly
  highlighted the recommendation (results of the
  decision analysis) was not surprising
• The sensitivity analyses (robustness of a
  decision) and the reports of the explanation
  module (forming an audit trail) were appreciated
• Very useful for training, but not yet operational
  in a real emergency

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Feedback and what we have learned (2)

• The principle of moderated decision making
  workshops was well accepted
• They allow a structured discussion of the
  problem,
• allow the identification of relevant decision
  criteria and feasible countermeasures,
• ensure that the attribute tree is a reasonable
  basis for decision making,
• are very important and useful for training
  purposes.
• Sensible combinations of different
  countermeasures were missed in the urban scenario
• The methods and tools were not able to reflect
  the sequential and iterative process of decision
  making in real life in the agricultural scenario

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Future work

• To enhance the operational applicability of the
  whole system, RODOS including Web-HIPRE must be
  further improved (sequential decisions with
  sensible combinations, flexible in time and
  space)
• A better structured initial tree is important as
  a starting point for the discussion
• More tests and training are required before
  evaluation tools can be implemented into
  emergency management arrangements

Missing features will be further developed within
the EURANOS project (6th Framework
Programme) More workshops are planned