A decision making support system for identification, management and assessment of territorial vulnerability

This paper presents the model used to support a decision making tool for guiding interventions in a territory. After conducting a systematic review to identify multi-criterion decision models relevant to the case on hand, a system based on service-oriented architecture implemented, the developed application allowed obtaining the short, medium- and long-term actions necessary to strengthen a region before a natural disaster. As input to the tool, we used the information that characterises a territory, starting from indicators grouped by dimensions (environmental, urban-regional, political-institutional, economic-productive and sociocultural). The information processing generates an overall vulnerability index and, for each dimension, the system recommends the actions to take. Even though the decision-making models based on multi-criteria analysis produced different results, their combination with a services oriented architecture was seen as the best strategy for developing the decision making support system.