Digital Earh Action (DEA) was a research project developed internally at CIMA Foundation, which aimed to develop new technologies and studies in the area of geospatial data collection, management and analysis. In more detail, DEA focused on the possibilities of using GIS (Geographic Information System) analysis and advanced geospatial representations to study risk and damage scenarios, including in dynamic and multicomponent terms. Since 2011, when the project began, many of the proposed solutions have been adopted and brought into operational settings within international projects.
The objective was to obtain increasingly detailed risk scenarios for prevention or post-disaster management purposes. In particular, DEA wanted to develop risk analysis and reduction studies using simple methods and low cost technologies for applications in developing and emerging countries, where the impacts of natural hazards can be devastating and resources in the recovery phase limited.
The project was modular and articulated in different components with different objectives. Among the most important results achieved, we point out the formalization of the multi-component approach, i.e. it takes into account different aspects of the same scenario, which led to the development of RASOR , a risk analysis tool able to work on a probabilistic basis. Furthermore, the research conducted within DEA has contributed to the implementation of the testing of new civil protection components in the OpenStreetMap project by identifying data that can support specific information (e.g. the height of a residential entrance compared to the street level in flood risk areas) and promoting online volunteering. The collaboration with the Italian section of OpenStreetMap to explore this activity resulted in 2018 in the international project V-IOLA .
Among the other results achieved, we also point out the formalization of catalogues mapping the availability of geospatial data from conventional and non-conventional sources, the study of the vulnerability of infrastructure networks aimed at emergency management, the development of a unique methodology able to generate multi-risk scenarios through a multi-dimensional description of the territory (DEAcube) and the development of the EDIT methodology for the processing of data generated by crowdsourcing and their use in the creation of multi-prospective disaster scenarios.