José H. Canós-Cerdá, Carmen Penadés, Abel Gómez, & Marcos R. S. Borges. (2012). SAGA: An integrated architecture for the management of advanced emergency plans. In Z.Franco J. R. L. Rothkrantz (Ed.), ISCRAM 2012 Conference Proceedings – 9th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Vancouver, BC: Simon Fraser University.
Abstract: Despite the significant advances that software and hardware technologies have brought to the emergency management field, some islands remain where innovation has had little impact. Among them, emergency plan management is of particular relevance due to their key role in the direction of teams during responses. Aspects like coordination, collaboration, and others are spread in plain text sentences, impeding automatic tool support to improve team per-formance. Moreover, administrative management of plans becomes a mere document management activity. In this paper, we present SAGA, an architecture that supports the full lifecycle of advanced emergency plan management. By advanced we mean plans that include new types of interaction such as hypermedia and advanced process definition languages to provide precise specification of response procedures. SAGA provides all the actors involved in plan management a number of tools supporting all the stages of the plan lifecycle, from its creation to its use in training drills or actual responses. It is intended to be instantiated in systems promoted by civil defense agencies, providing administrative support to plan management; additionally, editing tools for plan designers and tools for analysis and improvement of such plans by organizations are provided. Plan enactment facilities in emergency response are also integrated. To our knowledge, it is the very first proposal that covers all the aspects of plan man-agement. © 2012 ISCRAM.
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John R. Harrald, Theresa I. Jefferson, Frank Fiedrich, Sebnem Sener, & Clinton Mixted-Freeman. (2007). A first step in decision support tools for humanitarian assistance during catastrophic disasters: Modeling hazard generated needs. In K. Nieuwenhuis P. B. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Intelligent Human Computer Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM 2007 Academic Proceedings Papers (pp. 51–56). Delft: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: The US has not yet developed adequate models for estimating hazard generated needs, the necessary first step for developing useful decision support systems needed to estimate the capability and capacity of the response forces required. Modeling and technology required to support the decisions made by humanitarian relief organizations requires scenario driven catastrophic planning. This paper documents the lack of effective decision support tools and systems for humanitarian aid and describes the current state of models and methods used for determination of hazard generated needs. The paper discusses work performed on a catastrophic earthquake preparedness project. It outlines how the results of this project will be used to advance the modeling and decision support capabilities of federal, state and local disaster planners and emergency responders.
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Renato Iannella, & Karen Henricksen. (2007). Managing information in the disaster coordination centre: Lessons and opportunities. In K. Nieuwenhuis P. B. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Intelligent Human Computer Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM 2007 Academic Proceedings Papers (pp. 581–590). Delft: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: The current scope of ICT support for disaster coordination is primarily focused at either the network or data levels. There is significant opportunity for ICT to play an even more important role for disaster coordination at the information level. This paper reviews the information structures and requirements gathered from disaster coordination centres based on exercise observations. Such coordination of information is usually based on national frameworks that document structures, roles, and responsibilities, but are seldom supported by relevant ICT infrastructure or systems. This paper uses the lessons learned from the exercise observations to identify future opportunities for information management software to support disaster centre operations. In particular, the paper introduces a prototypical Crisis Information Management System we are developing to support two challenges: incident notification and resource messaging. The system is based on open standards under development within the OASIS standards consortium, and will be evaluated as part of future exercises.
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Ignacio Aedo, Paloma Díaz, Victor A. Bañuls, José H. Canós-Cerdá, & Starr Roxanne Hiltz. (2011). Information technologies for emergency planning and training. In E. Portela L. S. M.A. Santos (Ed.), 8th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management: From Early-Warning Systems to Preparedness and Training, ISCRAM 2011. Lisbon: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: Crucial to improving the management of emergency situations is the definition of suitable Emergency Plans and training of participants in the application of such plans. In order to design a good Emergency Plan, experts from different areas need to work collaboratively to identify all the events and the relationships among such events. The main purpose of this project is to study different information technology techniques that can be used in the elaboration of and training for Emergency Plans, based on the use of scenarios. The use of such techniques will support collaborative development of Emergency Plans, the use of rich formats that provide different perspectives on a plan, the exportation and sharing of plans in order to increase their evolution and improvement, the instruction of participants, as well as better interaction, participation and exchange of knowledge. Key aspects of the plans for this recently begun project are described in this paper.
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Jonas Landgren. (2011). Critical aspects of early-phase response work and its consequences for digital event-log systems. In E. Portela L. S. M.A. Santos (Ed.), 8th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management: From Early-Warning Systems to Preparedness and Training, ISCRAM 2011. Lisbon: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: This paper reports from a study focusing on documentation practice in emergency and crisis response work. Specific focus is put on how information is produced and used in the time-critical setting of a situation room part of a command center at a local fire and rescue services. The study uncovers critical aspects of early-phase response work and its potential consequences for digital event-log systems for supporting documentation and reporting. The findings show that fundamental and important information are produced outside of the formal event-log based documentation systems and not as an embedded and integrated activity of using these systems. The analysis shows existing information technology in use lack important functionality in order to contribute to an event-log based system design as suggested in the DERMIS-framework.
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Maria I. G. B. Ferreira, João L. R. Moreira, Maria Luiza M. Campos, Bernardo F. B. Braga, Tiago P. Sales, Kelli de F. Cordeiro, et al. (2015). OntoEmergePlan: variability of emergency plans supported by a domain ontology. In L. Palen, M. Buscher, T. Comes, & A. Hughes (Eds.), ISCRAM 2015 Conference Proceedings ? 12th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Kristiansand, Norway: University of Agder (UiA).
Abstract: The preparation of high quality emergency plans to guide operational decisions is an approach to mitigate the emergency management complexity. In such multidisciplinary scenario, teams with different perspectives need to collaborate towards a common goal and interact within a common understanding. In this scenario, the characterization of the variability of the elements involved in these plans is an important issue, which is addressed by the emergency plans generation methodology Document Product Line for Emergency Plans (DPL(EP)). To increase common understanding of plans, we propose an adaptation of this methodology by applying a well-founded emergency ontology, termed OntoEmergePlan, which supports the domain engineering phase. It is grounded in a foundational ontology, which ensures a higher consistency degree to the process of plans generation.
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Carmen Penadés, Marcos R. S. Borges, José H. Canós-Cerdá, & Adriana S. Vivacqua. (2011). A product line approach to the development of advanced emergency plans. In E. Portela L. S. M.A. Santos (Ed.), 8th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management: From Early-Warning Systems to Preparedness and Training, ISCRAM 2011. Lisbon: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: Emergency plans play a central role in emergency management processes. However, the technical problems associated to emergency plan development have received very little attention. As a matter of fact, most emergency plans are printed documents prepared with the sole support of a word processing system. As a consequence, new media are the exception in current plans. Moreover, the plans are developed without any methodological support that guides planners through the plan development process. In this paper we introduce DPL(EP), a method for the development of emergency plans. Based on the Document Product Lines process for the development of variable content document families, its main goal is to provide methodological guidance and tool support for the development of emergency plans. The distinguishing characteristics of the method are: first, the use of feature models to describe variability in emergency plan content and in the representation of the plan components; second, the “one organization-one plan” philosophy of the development process that produces customized plan editors; and third, its product line nature that enforces reuse of information elements, making plan development more convenient.
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Pereira, J., Fidalgo, R., Lotufo, R., & Nogueira, R. (2023). Crisis Event Social Media Summarization with GPT-3 and Neural Reranking. In Jaziar Radianti, Ioannis Dokas, Nicolas Lalone, & Deepak Khazanchi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International ISCRAM Conference (pp. 371–384). Omaha, USA: University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Abstract: Managing emergency events, such as natural disasters, requires management teams to have an up-to-date view of what is happening throughout the event. In this paper, we demonstrate how a method using a state-of-the-art open-sourced search engine and a large language model can generate accurate and comprehensive summaries by retrieving information from social media and online news sources. We evaluated our method on the TREC CrisisFACTS challenge dataset using automatic summarization metrics (e.g., Rouge-2 and BERTScore) and the manual evaluation performed by the challenge organizers. Our approach is the best in comprehensiveness despite presenting a high redundancy ratio in the generated summaries. In addition, since all pipeline components are few-shot, there is no need to collect training data, allowing us to deploy the system rapidly. Code is available at https://github.com/neuralmind-ai/visconde-crisis-summarization.
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El Hamali Samiha, Nouali-TAboudjnent, N., & Omar Nouali. (2011). Knowledge extraction by Internet monitoring to enhance crisis management. In E. Portela L. S. M.A. Santos (Ed.), 8th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management: From Early-Warning Systems to Preparedness and Training, ISCRAM 2011. Lisbon: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: This paper presents our work on developing a system for Internet monitoring and knowledge extraction from different web documents which contain information about disasters. This system is based on ontology of the disasters domain for the knowledge extraction and it presents all the information extracted according to the kind of the disaster defined in the ontology. The system disseminates the information extracted (as a synthesis of the web documents) to the users after a filtering based on their profiles. The profile of a user is updated automatically by interactively taking into account his feedback.
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Oliver Schmitt, & Tim A. Majchrzak. (2012). Using document-based databases for medical information systems in unreliable environments. In Z.Franco J. R. L. Rothkrantz (Ed.), ISCRAM 2012 Conference Proceedings – 9th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Vancouver, BC: Simon Fraser University.
Abstract: Healthcare and crisis management are pervaded by the usage of Information Systems (IS). Virtually all IS rely on data storage. Despite the document-oriented nature of medical datasets, the prevailing kind of database used are relational (RDBMS) ones. In order to find a more adequate solution in a development project for a patientregistry, we evaluated a document-based database incorporated into the data storage layer of a system. To foster the understanding of this technology, we present the background of form-originated data storage in healthcare, introduce document-based databases, and describe our scenario. Based on our findings, we generalize the results with a focus on crisis management. We found that document-based databases such as CouchDB are well-suited for IS in medical contexts and might be a feasible option for the future implementation of systems in various fields of healthcare, crisis response, and medical research. © 2012 ISCRAM.
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Christian Sell, & Iris Braun. (2009). Using a workflow management system to manage emergency plans. In S. J. J. Landgren (Ed.), ISCRAM 2009 – 6th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management: Boundary Spanning Initiatives and New Perspectives. Gothenburg: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: In the event of a disaster in Germany a so-called executive staff is set up. In support of their work they refer to emergency plans, which describe the chronological order of a set of suitable measures for a dedicated event e.g. an evacuation. These plans only exist in the form of large printed documents. Hence, the technical support for executing emergency plans is very limited. In this paper we present a model for a workflow management system (WfMS) for supporting the modeling, execution and management of emergency plans before and during a disaster. It is based on the idea that emergency plans are similar to business processes and can therefore be modeled as workflows. In contrast to most traditional WfMS, the introduced approach supports unstructured activities and their delegation as well as the management of resources. Furthermore, we analyze drawbacks of the current process for disaster management using emergency plans.
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