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Abstract/Executive Summary:

The increasing frequency and severity of natural hazards has greatly raised awareness of local authorities and governments all around the world, towards more efficient planning and management of natural disasters. Environmental incidents in the past couple of decades have resulted in a loss of thousands of human lives, as well as severe damage to infrastructures and economies alike. Traditional methods for managing natural disasters usually focus on the assignment of resources in real-time operations, as well as on the support of the recovery processes. Information technologies such as Geographical Information Systems have been of great help in such approaches.

The latest developments in all areas of Information and Communication Technologies offer a huge and largely unexploited potential for supporting the whole lifecycle of natural hazards management. Computational tools such as environmental simulation, operational logistics and knowledge representation are now available to support scenario-based incident management, as well as real-time decision support. Wireless sensor networks, satellite imaging and communications, as well as terrestrial wireless communication technologies, today allow closeto-real-time monitoring of environmental parameters all around the globe; furthermore, use of such technologies in more than military applications is now possible, which enables a previously unimaginable range of services related to the protection of the environment. Web-GIS and modern mobile personal computing technologies complement the image by enabling virtually unlimited access to up-to …