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SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT FOR SIMULATION AND
EVALUATION EMERGENCIES
Tomáš Ludík, Josef Navrátil and Karel Kisza
Abstract: Managing the emergencies at the Emergency Staff requires a high co-operation between its members and their fast decision making. For these purpose it is necessary to prepare Emergency Staff members adequately. The aim of this paper is to describe the system development that focuses to emergency staff processes and simulation and evaluation emergencies. The system development is based on the principles of process management, and business process management. The suite called jBPM was used for during development. The output is the information system that allows users to simulate emergencies, including effective decision making. The system also evaluates the progress of the emergency processes solving by quantitative and qualitative indicators. Higher quality of specialists’ education can be achieved by using this simulator and negative impacts of emergencies can be reduced.
Keywords: Simulation, Evaluation, Emergencies, Service Integration, jBPM 1. Introduction
The objective of the paper is to describe the development of a process simulator in order to prepare and train emergency staff members at national and international level. Preparation is aimed at promotion of processes and effective decision-making during the security environment analysis and crisis management. It equally includes comprehensive training and evaluation of the human factor. This goal is based on detailed analysis of the current state [9, 10 and 15] and also reflects the requirements of experts in the field of emergency management [1, 5].
Paper is divided into three parts. The problem formulation describes large-scale accident caused by selected hazardous chemical substances and chemical products, which is the area that has been selected to create the simulator creation. Later, the development of process simulator is described in terms of the process analysis [17] and
modelling in the business process modelling notation (BPMN) [16]. The final part of the paper presents the system development and outputs of the research and possibilities of system at process simulation and evaluation.
A number of emergency situations are solved at the level of Emergency Staff. The aim is to develop a comprehensive information system that will cover these situations. For this reason, an iterative approach, that allows implementation of the system by parts, was selected. Design of the system is illustrated on chosen situation, which is the leak of chemical hazardous substances.
2. Problem Formulation
Large-scale accident caused by selected hazardous chemical substances and chemical products is rare event demonstrated by uncontrolled flows of energy (fire, explosion), and leaks of toxic substances [6]. These are partially or totally uncontrollable, time and space
47 bounded event which occurred or which
is associated with the use of the building or facility where the hazardous substance is manufactured, processed, used, transported or stored. This situation can lead to immediate or delayed serious damage or threat to life and health of people, livestock, and environment or for damage to property [14].
To solve large-scale emergency, it is appropriate to use the corresponding model action plan called Large-scale accidents caused by selected hazardous chemical substances and chemical products processed by Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic [14], which addresses issues across the board-wide Czech Republic. Another information source is Operational plans at regional level. These especially include individual emergency plans, which are subdivided into: Regional Emergency Response Plan which are processed by Fire fighters in cooperation with the region, all the possible places where accidents can occur mainly anthropogenic action [3, 4]; Internal Emergency Plan which are focused on particular facilities or subject, they are processed by the body meeting the requirement of the legislation [2]; External Emergency Plan which are
focused on particular facilities or subject too, but they are processed by Fire fighters processes [3].
Desired state is the stabilization of activities in the chemical facility and decontamination of equipment in the immediate surroundings of the accident. The best solution is to focus to the stabilization of public service authorities. 3. System Analysis
The aim of this part is to model the processes of selected emergencies and to specify them in detail. The result is a view on partial actions and user roles that are responsible for the actions [16, 17]. There is a simple process, describing a response to an emergency on the Emergency Staff level, on the highest process analysis level (Fig.1). It is the highest level of abstraction. The process starts with receiving a notification about an emergency. If an Emergency State is declared, it is necessary to gather the Emergency Staff. Subsequently, the whole range of emergency processes is carried out on the Emergency Staff level in order to deal with the emergency. Once these actions are carried out and the emergency is over, it is possible to disband the Emergency Staff.
Figure1: Process of Solving of Emergencies The next step is to model the activities
displayed in the Fig.1 in detail. The first of them is called Receiving Notification of Emergency. On a lower level, it is possible to consider this action as a sub-process. The process starts when the operation centre receives a notification of a leakage of hazardous substances by phone. The operator obtains details of concerning the location, the accident scope and the number of people injured. The operator must verify, whether the
call is not only a false alarm. Subsequently, there is an evaluation of relevance of the emergency. The units of Integrated Rescue System (IRS) are dispatched to the place of the leak and if the situation is serious, an emergency state is declared. As the aim of the paper is to create information system for the Emergency Staff, the process continues just in the case of the Emergency and when the emergency state is declared. After the declaration of the emergency
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state, the mayor of the competent municipality is informed. A standard formulated report describing the status of the emergency is created to provide the mayor with all the relevant information. Upon its receipt, the mayor of the competent township is obliged to verify
the information and gets in contact with the Information Operation Centre. If the information is verified successfully, the Emergency Staff is gathered. In the other case, the process is cancelled. For more details see Fig. 2.
Figure2: Receiving Notification of Emergency The next step is a process of Summoning
of the Emergency Staff. It is a very simple process, in which the mayor meets the Emergency Staff members and commences its activity. In the first case, the mayor specifies a notification message, in which he or she informs the individual Emergency Staff Members about the emergency and the place and time of the first Emergency Staff meeting. Based on the character of the emergency, the mayor can adjust the Emergency Staff structure and invite other specialists into the Emergency Staff. All the Emergency Staff Members
are then sent a notification with information about the situation. They can confirm or reject their participation. The mayor is notified about the confirmation of each member and if needed, he can send a fast reaction. Afterwards, it is possible to begin the activity of the Emergency Staff in a time which has been specified in advance and to start to deal with the emergency itself. All the actions are adequately documented and therefore a report on the Emergency Staff activity commencement can be created. The whole process of gathering of the Emergency Staff is in Fig. 3.
Figure 3: Notify the Emergency Staff Various activities and tasks are
performed on the Emergency Staff level. The mayor of the competent municipality (Emergency Staff Leader) is responsible for the response to the emergency and he or she gradually assigns the tasks that should lead bringing the Emergency under control. The individual activities that must be carried out are defined by law [2]. The
Mayor has a possibility to choose a task and a user role or person that is responsible for the task and he or she can also specify the task in more detail. The group performs chosen task and adequately documents its solution. Once the task is completed, the mayor checks whether this is really the case. If the task is not completed or completed just partially, the Mayor has an opportunity
49 to re-assign or modify the task. When all
the specified tasks have been completed, it is possible to end the emergency and to
disband the Emergency Staff. The corresponding process map is depicted in Fig. 4.
Figure 4: Emergency Processes of Emergency Staff Similarly, it is possible to continue in the
decomposition and modelling of the processes into further detail. If a more complex information system for the Emergency Management were to be created, the processes would have to be more complex and modelled into a further level of detail. After modelling of the individual activities, the next step is system implementation, which is described in the next section.
4. System Implementation
Interaction with a user is necessary when dealing with emergencies. This is solved within BPMN 2.0 by means of User Tasks [16]. User Task creation depends on the chosen architecture, the jBPM in this case. The architecture chosen supports the use of human tasks inside processes using a special user task. A user task node represents an atomic task that needs to be executed by a human actor [7]. Although jBPM has a special user task node for including human tasks inside a process, human tasks are considered the same as any other kind of external service that needs to be invoked and are therefore simply implemented as a domain-specific service. To have human actors participate in the processes, it is needed to [8]:
- Include human task nodes inside the process to model the interaction with human actors;
- Integrate a task management component;
- Have end users interact with a human task client to request their task list and claim and complete the tasks assigned to them.
As an example of a Service Automation in the form of a User Task, an activity called Commencing of the solution of the Emergency was chosen. This activity proceeds the Notification of Emergency and the Summoning of the Emergency Staff. The activity is described in BPMN 2.0. The element describing the task looks as follows:
<userTask id="_5-7" name="Zahajeni reseni KS _ Starosta" >
To ensure correct form display and task function, it is necessary to pass over the data entered by the user. This means that the required data is copied from the process variables to the task parameters. Once the task finishes, the results are then returned by means of mapping to the process variables. A script in Java programming language is used for this purpose. This script is launched upon the start or finish of the task. An example of the script for manipulation with the entered data is shown below.
<extensionElements> <tns:onExit-script
scriptFormat="http://www.java.com/java"> <script>
ukolySeznam = new java.util.ArrayList(); ukolyPrirazeni = new java.util.HashMap(); if ("y".equals(u1resit)) {
ukolySeznam.add("Vyrozumeni");
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}
if ("y".equals(u2resit)) {
ukolySeznam.add("Varovani obyvatel");
ukolyPrirazeni.put("Varovani obyvatel", u2Actor); } kcontext.setVariable("ukolySeznam", ukolySeznam); kcontext.setVariable("ukolyPrirazeni", ukolyPrirazeni); </script> </tns:onExit-script> </extensionElements>
First of all, the assignment of individual tasks to users is evaluated and these results are assigned into the corresponding data structures, which are then assigned into the process variables. The input and output variables have to be mapped. At the end, it is possible to assign the User Task created to a concrete user, in this case to the Mayor.
<potentialOwner>
<resourceAssignmentExpression>
<formalExpression>starosta</formalExpression> </resourceAssignmentExpression>
</potentialOwner>
Consequently, the human task service needs to be integrated with the jBPM engine just like any other external service. This is done by registering a work item handler that is responsible for translating the abstract work item (in this case a human task) to a specific
invocation of a service [8]. It is done by registering WSHuman-TaskHandler as prsented in the following code:
KnowledgeBase kbase = readKnowledgeBase(); StatefulKnowledgeSession ksession =
base.newStatefulKnowledgeSession();
ksession.getWorkItemManager().registerWorkItemHa ndler("Human Task", new WSHumanTaskHandler());
By default, this handler will connect to a human task service on the local machine on port 9123. The address and port of the human task service can easily be changed. This service should be used by invoking the setConnection(ipAddress, port) method on the WS Human Task Handler.
To ensure the interaction with the end users, jBPM Console is used. This is a tool for interaction of the running processes (User Tasks) with the user. Business processes and Human Tasks can be managed through this web console. There is an example of a form for starting the response to the emergency by the Mayor (Fig. 5). The names of the variables that can be seen in the individual fields will be replaced with their values in runtime.
Figure5: User Interface for Human Task 4.1. Key Performance Indicators
Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) tools are used for Implementation of the Key Performance Indicators (KPI). All
the aspects of introducing KPI – from definition of the data gathered by monitoring until the display of the KPI – are described in the next part. At
51 first, the principles of the data storage
that will be used for getting the KPI are described by means of History log. The BAM rules for jBPM are then used to manipulate and display the KPIs.
In many cases, it is useful to store information about the execution of process instances, so that this information can be used afterwards. Storing history information in the runtime database is usually not a good idea, as this would result in ever-growing runtime data. Furthermore, monitoring and analysis queries might influence the performance of the runtime engine [8]. That is why historical information about the execution of the process instances is stored separately in History Log. The History Log of execution information is created based on the events generated by the process engine during execution. The jBPM runtime engine provides a generic mechanism to listen to different kinds of events. The necessary information can easily be extracted from these events and persisted, for example in a database. Filters can be used to store only the relevant information.
The jBPM-BAM module contains an event listener that stores process-related information in a database using Java Persistence API (JPA) or Hibernate directly. The database contains two tables; one for Process Instance Information and one for Node Instance Information [8]:
ProcessInstanceLog: This contains the process instance id, the process (definition) id, the start date and (if applicable) the end date of all process instances.
NodeInstanceLog: This table contains more detailed information about which nodes were actually executed inside each process instance. Whenever a node
instance is entered from one of its incoming connections or is exited through one of its outgoing connections, that information is stored in this table. To achieve this, it stores the process instance id and the process id of the process instance it is being executed in, and the node instance id and the corresponding node id (in the process definition) of the node instance in question. Finally, the type of event (0 = enter, 1 = exit) and the date of the event is stored as well.
Business Activity Monitoring is related to the real-time monitoring of the processes and introduces a possibility to intervene directly (possibly even automatically), based on the analysis of these events. Drools Flow allows users to define reports based on the events generated by the process engine, and makes it possible to directly intervene in specific situations using event processing rules (Drools Fusion). Based on the Eclipse BIRT plug-in (Business Intelligence Reporting Tool), users can create reports that show the KPIs of their business. It is easy for the users to even define custom reports using the predefined data sets containing all process history information (based on history logger that logs all runtime events in a database).
By adding a history logger to the process engine, all relevant events can be stored in a database. This history log can be used to monitor and analyze the execution of the processes. Drools Flow uses the Eclipse BIRT (Business Intelligence Reporting Tool) to create reports that show the KPIs. The Eclipse BIRT framework allows the user to define data sets, create reports, include charts, preview the reports, and export them on web pages. The following screen shot shows a sample on how to create such a chart (Fig. 6).
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Figure 6: Drools Eventing Report [8] 4.2. Service Outsourcing
It was found desirable to be able to use the existing systems or portals for automation of the modelled processes. As there is only a small amount of functioning services within the Emergency Management that could be integrated with the system, it was necessary to use the systems that do not have any interfaces exposed [11]. The following systems within the paper were primarily used:
System for Modeling of the Leakage of the Dangerous Substances – a system, which makes it possible to predict a leakage of dangerous substance based on the supplied parameters. In the Czech Republic, the systems most commonly used are called TerEx or Aloha. Once the parameters are entered, a predicted model is created in the form of text output and map. This information can directly be used in the system developed. Integrated Warning Service System – a service provided by the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute that serves to inform the public and Emergency Management Bodies about warnings declared for the Czech Republic.
Geographical Information System – a standard add-on to each of the Emergency Management information system, which makes it possible to illustrate emergencies being dealt with on a map. Contextual mapping service
was used within the Proof of Concept. It enables the user to display the situation in a given context.
Transport Information System – system used when there is a leakage of hazardous substances related to transportation. The system is administered by the Ministry of Transport. It makes benefit of labels that are required by law to be present on the containers with the substances. These make for a quick identification of the transported substance, which helps to improve the efficiency of the response to the emergency.
5. Conclusion
The main aim of this paper is to describe, design and implement process simulator for education of the Emergency Staff. Therefore it is necessary to identify, model, and then configure the processes involved in disaster management. Selected procedures are described from the methodological perspective but also from the perspective of software architecture, which allows processes automation. The paper emphasizes the use of standards and best practices in the field of process management. The result represents a comprehensive system for simulation and evaluation processes of the Emergency Staff.
53 described issue it is also appropriate to
familiarize with the Process Framework for Emergency Management [12]. This contribution emphasizes the importance of the two perspectives in the deployment process of emergency management. It should be noted that the architecture itself is not sufficient for the automation of emergency management processes [11]. It should be supplemented by a methodology that defines how to proceed with process automation and deployment. Such methodology has been already published in the article entitled Process Methodology for Emergency Management [13]. This methodology has been used during the automation of selected emergency management scenarios described in this paper.
Members of Emergency Staff understand emergency planning issues and emergency management more easily when illustrated on real examples. The resulting solution allows to model emergency scenarios using process maps. The maps can be configured and deployed on a process engine for the purpose of simulation emergency processes in training environment. Finally, it should be noted that the proposed solution is suitable not only for educational purposes, but also for the automation and deployment of real emergency scenarios in the Czech Republic. Thus the used business process management suite allows reflecting any changes in emergency scenarios more quickly.
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