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e-Laboratory on Open Systems Natural Resource Management

Challenges

The REMGAREV network aims to provide, beyond disciplinary boundaries, an integrative and predictive geomatic system upon risks. Initially covering a large part of the Euro-Mediterranean region, its objective is to extend to different continents. The REMGAREV-DC digital campus has been set up to enable the sharing of resources crucial to its scientific network.

Position within the “geometrics of risks” road map

This section follows a cross-cutting approach in terms of the prevention and management of risks irrespective of their nature. Taking into account the complexity of how risks operate, it includes risk prevention and management within territorial systems. Its objective is to provide generic methods associated to the nature of risks and to reveal the feedback loop that links an extreme event to its territory (that is, how an extreme event impacts a territory and, conversely, how a territory, through its morphology and its operations, amplifies or mitigates the effects of this extreme event and reveals its vulnerability). Following better comprehension of this first feedback loop, we must then position ourselves within the perspective of the prevention and management of risk, and control the second feedback loop that does not link the extreme event, but rather the processes of risk prevention and management within territories.

Societal challenges

One of the challenges that countries and regions of the 21st century face is in ensuring sustainable development that undoubtedly incorporates risk prevention, both on the structural and on the dynamic plan; this leads to the sustainability of territorial systems at all the spatio-temporal levels of the society as well as the environment. The territorial intelligence systems proposed will address these issues that require the development of a new generation geomatics of risks. The different aspects involved concern the modelling of territorial systems placed in extreme situations in order to prevent them. This multi-scale modelling incorporates the resilience of these territorial systems.

Contextualised and transversal concept development

Transversality is a double fortification with (i) impact of transversal concepts in order to better understand the processes implemented in multi-scale “objects” and (ii) extraction or fortification of concepts using knowledge on the specific functioning of multi-scale “objects”.

The following notions are specified:

• conceptual modelling of risk
• sustainability of a system
• spatial ergonomics
• prevention
• resilience
• territorial intelligence

When considered in toto, the system can be multi-scale with components at different levels of organisation. Risks and ripple effects and their prevention and resilience in case of an accident must be modelled conjointly across the whole system as well as across its components.

The modelling of risks consists in establishing dynamic relationships between multimodal and multi-scale spatio-temporal data and the spatio-temporal quantification of risks and of their social consequences. Dynamic relationships generate and constantly develop the states of the “risky situation” and call on the notion of “potentialities” linked to multiple combinations that are likely to occur de facto, regardless of how weak, or even incalculable their predictability might be. The quantification of risks is generally expressed in terms of the output probability of the system with regard to the conditions which define its existence or its sustainability.

Preventing risks for a system means determining the strategies that constantly place the system in a state which maximises life expectancy under the constraints relative to its components.

The resilience of a system is the identification of the strategies which reposition the system within its field of sustainability at a minimal social cost. This field of sustainability is defined for a “normal” system life-span.

Territorial intelligence through spatial ergonomics consists in integrating within an open cognitive approach, - whose aims are both fundamental and pro-active - a global comprehension of the capacity of territories, at various scales, to provide societies with resources and access to these resources, both in normal as well as in crisis situations, at the cheapest generalised cost (production, acquisition, operation, risk-taking).

Generic and integrative approaches of the geometrics of risk

GIS: layers of information simultaneously structured under the semantic (thematic), temporal, geometric and topological perspective.

Dynamic GIS, HBDS (Hypergraphs Based Data Structures) method, Geodatabase

Contribution to knowledge development

The need for explanatory integrative models:

• compose, reconstruct interaction networks or conceptual links within processes that can be calculated;
• validate and/or confront the trajectories with knowledge of the phenomenon;
• proceed using the subtractive approach to hypotheses or links in order to identify the key features of the system and understand its evolution processes.

Contribution to the development of integrative decision-support tools

Conception model using adaptive GIS that integrate dynamic processes with:

• the interfacing of these systems to integrate knowledge and
• serious gaming to immerse the actors on the ground in the modelling and to facilitate multi-scale decision-making.

Name, e-mail, website and institution

of the responsible for the e-laboratory

Thierry Saint Gérand | thierry.saint-gerand@unicaen.fr

of the contact for the e-laboratory

Abdelkrim Bensaid | Abdelkrim.bensaid@unicaen.fr

list of the teams participating in the e-laboratory

• University of Batna, Béchar, Mascara, Constantine, Oran, Alger (Algeria)
• University of Caen, Strasbourg, Paris, Marne-la-Vallée, Le-Havre (France)
• University of Brescia (Italy);
• University of Meknès, Agadir, Béni-Mellal (Morocco);
• University of Latakié (Syria);
• University of Tunis, Sfax, Sousse (Tunisia).

Initial functioning

Conception, assembling, launching and steering borne jointly by the IDEES-Caen CNRS 6266 (University of Caen in France) laboratory in collaboration with the LRNAT (Laboratory of Natural Risks and territorial planning – University of Batna, Algeria) laboratory. For further developments, the network is destined to benefit from allocations or support (financial, equipment, travel budgets) from various levels (local, regional, national, international organisations (Universities, research centres, EU, UNESCO, UN, UNITAR, Francophone University Agency (AUF), Campus France…) depending on the expenditure of its structural operations as well as the fundamental and/or operational research targeted, training, higher education or workshops and conferences that it will launch or in which it will be involved.

Targeted functioning

Network dynamics among all the partners, around a permanent virtual office of the network coordinated by the founding team: IDEES Caen UCBN. This office will be composed of 1 representative head of the network from each member country, around the international scientific coordinator (Pr T. Saint-Gérand IDEES Caen) and the computing coordinator (IR A. Bensaïd).

Each partner country will be represented by a national coordinator who will be responsible for running and developing the network and its projects within the national framework. In particular, he will responsible for:

• Promoting animation (mailing lists), exchanges and projects among members within thematic work groups that are operational or under construction.
• Working towards the development of computerised resources (notably within University centres of computerised services) useful in the exchange of information and the sharing of resources (data, software, documentations) within the framework of the REMGAREV network within each member country (development of intra-national collaborations) as well as among member countries.
• Organising yearly workshops and ensuring meaningful participation in the bi-annual international REMGAREV conference.

List of the persons in charge

• General coordinator: Sr Pr Thierry Saint-Gérand (IDEES Caen CNRS UMR IDEES 6266)
• Info-geomatic coordinator: Research Ingeneer Mohand Medjkane (IDEES Caen CNRS UMR IDEES 6266)

National managers

• Algeria: Pr M. Kalla (LRNAT Univ. de Batna)
• Morocco: Dr. R. Ragala (Lecturer, University of Paris IV- Sorbonne)
• Tunisia: Dr. S. Dahech (Lecturer, FLSH University of Sfax)
• Syria: I. Sakher, MA (University of Lattakié)
• France: Dr E. Propeck (Lecturer, LIVE CNRS University of Strasbourg)
• Italy: Pr M. Tira (University of Brescia)

Research projects in the e-laboratory

Missions

Coordination and revitalisation, across the Mediterranean basin, of an operational interdisciplinary research with multiple partnerships based on a geomatic platform for the analysis and monitoring of spatial risks.

All risks listed within this space and therefore likely to be grasped are targeted.

They can be tackled using different approaches:

• disciplinary, multidisciplinary as well as within a global systemic perspective (multi-risk) of a transdisciplinary nature within territories;
• as personalised risks, depending on their field of origin (socio-technological, natural, health, social, economic, etc…).

The network’s scope of intervention also covers the management measures taken by the stakeholders (civil security perspective).

Objectives

REMGAREV-DC intends to become a joint reference equipment.

Its key objective is to provide the different partners with fundamental and operational research equipment that falls within the scope of risks:

• multidisciplinary and multi-sourced data,
• communication and training functionalities as well as exchange of experience and know-how among members (researchers and stakeholders involved in the analysis and the management of risks as well as the institutions they belong to),
• specialised expert assessments and working groups,
• a technical structure that is distributed (within each partner institution) and shared (including WEB services from Cloud computing)

This will enable:

• The cataloguing of data, online viewing of data, downloading, the referencing and indexing of links toward all the geospatial databases and their consultation and finally, connection to large global databases of reference as developed in paragraph 7 below;
• The constitution of a Trans-Mediterranean directory (Institutions – universities, engineering schools, laboratories, teachers, researchers, engineers, PhD students, territorial stakeholders) organised in databases that are indexed by country, region, theme, type of risk or risk approach, methodology or technical sector;
• The management and administration of users’ accounts;
• The constitution and management of a permanent specialised forum;
• The provision of a quarterly online newsletter;
• A reactive scientific management approach, notably a driving force behind proposals in the fields of identification, collection and harmonisation of data necessary in analysing risks (in line with the principles of the European standards of the INSPIRE directive);
• Setting up international video conferencing workshops;
• An online scientific journal at 2 levels: i) research milestones on the transitory progress of ongoing studies or projects (PhD students, young research teams, schemes under consideration) ii) online journal for final articles, with an international peer review committee;
• Transition to a cloud computing interface.

e-laboratory Scientific Committee

A scientific committee produced and completed from the scientific committees of the first two international conferences held at Batna (Algeria, 2010 and 2012) is being set up.

URL for the Website and/or Wiki of the e-laboratory

• page at Wikiversity

Grid, Cloud, or other network utilities to be used

The REMGAREV-DC will provide the following network utilities: 6.1 to 6.5

Web application using ESRI technology

Web application using ESRI technology for mapping and geo-processing services (ArcGis Server 10, Arcopole, Silverlight/WPF, Javascript and Flex,) and CMS joomla for the website.

Infrastructure of multi-site video-conferencing stations

Infrastructure of multi-site video-conferencing stations, to be implemented on the network’s partner sites, on the model and the principles of the approach that is currently operational at the CNRS University of Caen (France) department of Geography, that is: The video-conferencing platform: Brandname: Lifesize PHILIPS screen SQ552.1EA, model no 52FFL5605H/12 IP address: 194.199.103.21

Available modes of connection:

• directly from an IP address to another IP address; the station’s network parameters make it possible to make or receive a call
• through a platform (mcu-syrhano)

This platform manages the majority of the connection protocols (IP, H.323, RNIS) and enables connection between more than 2 participants. Example of connection parameters for the different protocols:

• IP: 195.221.21.71
• H.323 (GDS): 0235917001
• TEL / iSDN (RNIS): +33 (0)2 32 91 09 96

This approach makes it possible to manage virtual sessions directly by attributing the number of participants, an access code… It also provides the connection parameters at a given moment to the different participants.

Cloud Computing

Analysing a REMGAREV approach of financing internet access (on demand) through CLOUD internet webservices, project-based, in order to enable REMGAREV members to have modelling or specific analysis functionalities, calculating capacities, mass specialised data (eg. Meteorology, seismology), that is beyond the capacity of local resource centres.

Server

• Base: PowerEdge T320, TPM
• Chassis Configuration:
• 3.5" Chassis with up to 8 Hot Plug Hard Drives and Embedded SATA, Rack Configuration.
• Processor: Intel® Xeon® E5-2407 2.20GHz, 10M Cache,6.4GT/s QPI, No Turbo, 4C, 80W, Max, Mem,1066MHz
• DIMM type and speed of memory: 1333 MHz RDIMMs
• Memory capacity: 4GB RDIMM, 1333 MHz, Low Volt, Dual Rank, x8
• RAID Configuration: C3 - SW RAID 1 for S110, 2 SATA HDDs
• RAID controller: PERC S110, Software RAID
• Hard disk: 2TB (to expand), SATA, 3.5-in, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive (HotPlug)
• Supplementary network card: On-Board Broadcom 5720 Dual Port 1GBE
• Rack rails: Rack Chassis, No Rack Rails or Cable
• Management Arm

Software

• ESRI GIS technology (ArcGis Server, Arcopole, Silverlight/WPF, Javascript and Flex);
• Parallel and interoperable GIS platforms of the free and open-source domain;
• Web server: Apache or IIS;
• Map server: ArcGis Server;
• Joomla as the content management system (CMS).

Data and/or Tools to be shared

The REMGAREV-DC will provide the following network utilities:

• The cataloguing of data provided by the different partners, based on the general principle of volunteering, partnership and sharing, within conditions defined by the acceptance of a charter;
• Online viewing (flow of information) of data from different sources (based on geographic data bases, bibliographic resources, projects…);
• The downloading of data, depending on the rules of obtaining data, communication and security;
• Adding and searching for data;
• The management and administration of users’ accounts;
• Referencing and indexing links towards all accessible geospatial databases with regard to the issue of risks around the Euro-Mediterranean region and beyond;
• Connection to the large global databases of reference;
• Transition to a cloud computing interface

Comments

The REMGAREV network has officially been under construction since 2010 (when the first conference was held at Batna) but has been progressively constituted since 2008, over the course of international collaborations woven one at a time by its initiator.

Bibliography

Proceedings of the Batna Conferences in 2010 and 2012.

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