Software system

As noted in the About RiskScape section, the scoping process for the RiskScape tool specified a number of requirements to be met in the development of the user interface for RiskScape. Some of these contributed more to the choice of development environment for RiskScape than others. 

Several reasons suggested to use Java as the programming language. Java for instance provides an easily extensible set of components for creating user interfaces. RiskScape is therefore able to be built in a fashion that will be user friendly. It is also freely available and most PC's will already have Java RE installed. This meets the requirement that RiskScape should be available at no or low costs. Java also provides a rich set of linear geometric tools which perform all the necessary transformation to perform basic GIS functions on RiskScape datasets.

The user interface is designed to easily guide the user through the RiskScape components in a logical fashion.

As the RiskScape Model becomes populated with more regions and their associated hazard model simulations and asset databases, the interactive panels will update to those available to the system. Interactive graphic control is available for maps that display the results.

 

   

Flowchart showing software process.

 
RiskScape Modules

The plug-ins that form the calculation side of RiskScape are referred to as modules. There are five different types:

Hazard Modules
These are the hazard models that will cause the damage. Again several default models are supplied with RiskScape. A model can take a number of forms but realistically they are either a) pre-calculated exposure maps or b) a dynamic model that is run in real-time to calculate exposures in the requested area. User defined models of both kinds can be included in RiskScape, but the latter requires a high level of technical understanding of the RiskScape system and is best done in consultation with RiskScape. However a toolbox is provided to allow the import of pre-defined hazard maps to use as hazard models. Again the only constraint is that the exposures must comply to the RiskScape specification.

Asset Modules
These are databases of assets that can be impacted by a RiskScape model. Each asset module may contain only one type of asset, but multiple modules can be combined into a single analysis. The types of assets and the attributes that each type must specify are described in the next section. A number of ‘default’ asset databases are supplied with RiskScape, but a toolbox is also supplied to allow users to import their own asset datasets. The only caveat is that the user dataset must comply to the RiskScape standards for the attributes that it specifies.

Fragility Modules
These are the core of RiskScape and define the way that an asset (with certain attributes) will react to exposure to a given hazard. Currently no tools are provided to allow the user to define new fragility models, however in the future user modification of the fragility models (by a percentage shift, for example) will be possible to allow differing analyses of the data.

Aggregation Modules
These specify the aggregation units that are to be used to collate the results of the analysis. RiskScape provides meshblocks, suburbs and a 1km grid for all areas for which asset data is provided. A toolbox is available to import user-defined aggregation units.

Resource Modules
These are shared datasets that may be used by a number of different RiskScape models. Examples are digital elevation models (DEMs) or soil classes across the country. Currently these are supplied by RiskScape and not user-definable, but plans exist to change this in the future.

 

System Requirements

Java:  RiskScape supports all systems that have a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) available. The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) containing the JVM must be installed before RiskScape. The default JRE can be downloaded from Oracle/ Sun: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads. RiskScape has not been tested on other implementations of the JRE.

Operating System:  RiskScape has been tested on Windows XP, Max OS X, Ubuntu Linux.

Internet Broadband:  internet is recommended for best viewing of the maps in RiskScape.

Hardware: A dual-core high-spec CPU is recommended. Recommeded: Intel Core2 Duo/Quad/Extreme Intel Core i5 Intel Core i7 Intel Xeon AMD Athlon II AMD AthlonX2 AMD Phenom.

Not Recommended Intel Celeron AMD Sempron.

2Gb or RAM is required for RiskScape, 4Gb recommended