Dutch Government Reduces Risk with Intelligent Crisis Management Solution

The Capgemini team really understood our needs and helped us to put in place a system which gives us first class capability to coordinate disaster response nationwide and globally.
Ruud de Krom, Crisis coordinator, Ministry of Environment (VROM)

The Situation

One of the responsibilities of the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) is to minimize the environmental damage resulting from industrial waste. This remit includes guaranteeing clean drinking water is provided for Dutch citizens, ensuring the safe disposal of chemicals, and mitigating the risk of nuclear incidents.
To support the whole process of crisis management for areas under its responsibility, the organization needed a modern, flexible, integrated IT solution. Capgemini was selected as the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) partner to build the new solution, support the whole life cycle of application development and maintain the technology.

The Solution

Working with the ministry and key technology vendors, Capgemini designed and built a first-of-its-kind integral crisis and disaster advice system. ICAWEB is an advice system that can be used for different types of crisis and is unique in the world. The solution replaces a legacy website which was previously used only for managing chemical waste disposal.

The Result

ICAWEB, a user-friendly and scalable system for all the domains under the control of the ministry, is available 24/7, every day of the year. The solution has proved its value for several years and is now a part of an irreplaceable crisis and disaster advice system in the Netherlands. Other Dutch ministries, such as the ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, have also started to use it, and yet more intend to do so. ICAWEB remains the first – and still the only – crisis and disaster advice system in the country with unique functionality to support the whole decision making cycle based on situational awareness.