Abstract: Public safety organizations include emergency and law enforcement agencies, fire departments, rescue squads, and Emergency Medical Services (EMS). In response to increasing threats of terrorism and natural disasters, safety and security personnel must overcome technology barriers to enhance their efficiency, especially in the neuralgic section of information exchange. Limited availability of information hinders the response time and decision making process. Efficient communications supported by interoperable technology are vital to the situational awareness, scalability, and effectiveness of incident response. This paper?s prime objective is the review of available information systems than can be used to support and assist security agencies.

Abstract: Efficient management of mass casualty incidents is complex, since regular emergency medical services structures have to be switched to a temporary “disaster mode” involving additional operational and tactical structures. Most of the relevant decisions have to be taken on-site in a provisional and chaotic environment. Data gathering about affected persons is one side of the coin; the other side is on-site patient dispatching requiring information exchange with the regular emergency call center and destination hospitals. In this paper we extend a previous conference contribution about the research project e-Triage to the aspect of patient data and on-site patient dispatching. Our considerations reflect the situation in Germany, which deserves from our point of view substantial harmonization. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: Researchers and emergency management system designers constantly find ways to produce suitable systems that have best fit between technology, and tasks. However, there is significant gap in the literature on designing information system that places greater emphasis on situational qualities. We posit that situational qualities are as important as information system success qualities such as system quality, information/knowledge quality and service quality. This research work aimed to fill this theoretical gap in designing IS for disaster management and to contribute towards guiding design decisions for future emergency management information systems development. A prototype system called CEMAS was designed and developed to support current challenges in disaster management. The underlying guiding theory for CEMAS was situational qualities interweaved within information system success factors in the form of knowledge management system. This paper presents the evaluation results of CEMAS in a simulated environment for flood.

Abstract: This paper discusses the practical aspects and resulting insights of the results of a two-stage mathematical network flow model to help make the decisions required to get humanitarian aid quickly to needy recipients as part of a disaster relief operation. The aim of model is to plan where to best place aid inventory in preparation for possible disasters, and to make fast decisions about how best to channel aid to recipients as fast as possible. Humanitarian supply chains differ from commercial supply chains in their greater urgency of response and in the poor quality of data and increased uncertainty about important inputs such as transportation resources, aid availability, and the suddenness and degree of “demand”. The context is usually more chaotic with poor information feedback and a multiplicity of decision-makers in different aid organizations. The model attempts to handle this complexity by incorporating practical decisions, such as pre-allocation of emergency goods, transportation policy, fleet management and procurement, in an uncertainty environment featured by a scenario-based approach. Preliminary results based on the floods and landslides disaster of the Mountain Region of Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, point to how to cope with these challenges by using the mathematical model.

Abstract: Given unexpected incidents on routes of guards that check security objects, like banks, one of the most challenging problems is still how to support improvisation by security personnel in taking decisions to prevent or resolve such incidents. Another as important associated problem is how a security company can naturally take advantage of its existing and novel knowledge about its organizational and ICT infrastructures, and the introduction of a decision support system to help leverage of improvisation by humans. To tackle all this, on the one hand we present a dynamic coalition formation framework that allows the (re)configurations of agents that are associated with joint tasks in situational contexts to be evaluated by appropriate value functions. On the other hand, we present a dynamic scale-space paradigm that allows a security company to distill ranked lists of robust context-dependent reconfigurations at critical scales. We highlight the merits of ASK-ASSIST as a solution to the problem of supporting human improvisation.

Abstract: The Orlando metropolitan area in Florida, where Walt Disney World is located, is intimately familiar with impacts of natural disasters because of the yearly threat of hurricanes in the southeastern United States. One of the tools that has aided them in their efforts to monitor and manage such disasters is their 311 non-emergency call system, through which local residents can issue requests to the municipality for disaster-related information or other services. This paper provides a preliminary examination of the potential for the Orange County 311 system to provide actionable information to them in support of their efforts to manage a different type of disaster: the COVID-19 pandemic. The potential of the system to support the County in this context is illustrated through several preliminary analyses of the complete set of service requests that were registered in the first ten months of 2020.

Abstract: As freshwater availability for domestic and agro-industrial uses is highly sensitive to climate change, there is an urgent need for the management of this critical resource to be resilient, i.e., to cope with and rapidly recover from climate risks. To achieve this resilient goal, decision-makers need to have a comprehensive understanding of (i) the current and future local water resources, (ii) the ways these resources are and will be impacted by climate change, and (iii) the effects their management decisions can have. In this paper, we present an innovative scenario based modeling tool that help decision-makers make the most appropriate decision towards managing water resources: the Resilience Performance Assessment (RPA). This GIS-based decision support tool illustrates the current and future effects of climate change on local water resources and simulates the outcomes of different water resources management strategies. The RPA helps guide decision-makers towards the implementation of context specific adaptation strategies.

Abstract: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) provide multiple opportunities to first responders and disaster managers, especially as they continue to improve in affordability as well as capabilities. This paper provides a brief review of how UAV capabilities have been used in disaster management, examples of current use within disaster management, as well as adoption considerations. Example disaster domains include fires, tornadoes, flooding, building and dam collapses, crowd monitoring, search and rescue, and post disaster monitoring of critical infrastructures. This review can increase awareness and issues when considering UAVs by those challenged with the management of crisis and disaster events.

Abstract: This paper examines the problem of achieving efficient inter-organizational collaboration during emergency response. The authors interviewed 11 representatives from Norwegian emergency agencies and supporting organizations about a hypothetical scenario involving a large-scale chemical incident. The interviews resulted in the identification and categorization of more than 45 actors that would be involved in the response effort, clarification of the individual capabilities and knowledge those actors would possess, and descriptions of how they would interact and communicate with each other. The results illustrate the complexity and necessity of achieving inter-organizational collaboration by showing how capabilities and knowledge are distributed and communicated across different actors, and suggest that such communications are mainly verbal. Based on this, the paper discusses challenges and opportunities for improving inter-organizational collaboration in the future.

Abstract: In the new millennium new technologies (should) play an ever more prominent role in the management of mass casualty incidents (MCI). Drawing on empirical data from a four-year research project (SOGRO), the article reflects on the impact of information technologies (IT) on the organisation of emergency response and on rescue services against the backdrop of broader organisational shifts and contemporary demands. Because IT strengthens a particular way of MCI management, it is firstly described as expressing and reifying specific considerations of emergency response experts. Secondly, the benefits of an IT-based emergency response are critically reviewed. IT collects and makes available data about the rescue operation. Thus, it makes a formerly blurred rescue operation transparent. Although its operational benefit remains vague for on-scene executives, the visualisation reduces uncertainties among them. Thirdly, the article points out the inherent logics of IT. Its implementation not only satisfies newly evolved information needs, but also increases the control density.

Abstract: Social media are now widely used by affected members of the public during an emergency. As these platforms have become mainstream, governments have responded to the public?s expectation that information is available online, particularly during disasters. Emergency management organizations (EMOs) now widely use social media to communicate with the public alongside occasional intelligence gathering. While EMOs increasingly use social media, breakdowns in internal communication can inhibit the dissemination of timely information to their online followers. Drawing on a two-year ethnography at the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES), an Australian EMO, this paper outlines how the organization uses social media to disseminate information during emergencies and identifies the internal tensions around its use. These tensions include the prioritization of operational duties over public information responsibilities, and the difficulties around requesting and receiving information from operational personnel located on the ground.

Abstract: The first three days after an earthquake disaster demand good decisions in a very complex environment. Members of emergency operation centres (EOC) have to make decisions with limited information and under high time pressure. But the first 72 hours of disaster response activities are essential to minimize loss of life. Within the interdisciplinary German Collaborative Research Center 461: “Strong Earthquakes: A Challenge for Geosciences and Civil Engineering” a so-called Disaster Management Tool (DMT) is under development which presents some ideas for appropriate solutions to this problem. One module of the DMT will provide decision-support for the members of an EOC based on the Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) model, a description of the decision-making process of persons in real-world settings. Options for a reasonable computer-based decision support for the RPD process will be discussed. For this the system combines a simulation of the disaster environment with a multi-agent system (MAS). The simulation shows the results of different decisions so the decision-makers can evaluate them. The MAS calculates a solution for optimal resource allocation taking into account current available information. The goal of the ongoing work is to integrate these instruments into a user-friendly interface considering the real life needs of decision-makers in an EOC.

Abstract: Partial or total horizontal evacuation of populations in urban areas is an important protection measure against a natural or technological risk. However, casualties during massive displacement in a context of stress and in a potentially degraded environment may be high due to non-compliance with instructions, accidents, traffic jams, incivilities, lack of preparation of civil security or increased exposure to hazards. Working in evacuation plans is therefore fundamental in avoiding casualties caused by improvisation and in promoting self-evacuation whenever possible. Since it is impossible to re-create the conditions of a crisis on the ground to assess such evacuation plans, there is a need for realistic models in order to evaluate them using simulations. In this paper, we present the ESCAPE software framework that helps in the development of such plans and testing them. In particular, ESCAPE, which uses the GAMA open-source platform as a core component, provides an agent-based simulation tool that supports simulation of the evacuation of a city's population at fine temporal and Geographical scales. The framework was developed such that it works for a wide range of scenarios, both in terms of hazards, geographical configurations, individual behaviors and crisis management. In order to show its adaptability, two applications are presented, one concerning the evacuation of the city of Rouen (France) in the context of a technological hazard and the other pertaining to the evacuation of the district of Hanoi (Vietnam) in the event of floods.