Abstract: Today's society is exposed to an increasing number of disasters and large scale emergencies (e.g. earthquake in Haiti, global swine flu, or manmade disasters like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico). Information and communication technology (ICT) can help to prevent and mitigate the effects of threatening situations if applied appropriately. In industry ICT governance methods and portfolio management techniques have become important tools to successfully align ICT with business goals. However, the domain of emergency management (EM) has to deal with unpredictable situations, multi organizational collaborations and ad-hoc teams, conditions which make conventional existing methods less useful. Based on a qualitative analysis of several European and Australian EM organizations and government agencies this paper discusses a modular approach to optimize ICT portfolios in Emergency Management organizations in order to achieve strategic ICT alignment.

Abstract: In recent years governmental actors have become more and more dependent on IT systems for their responsibilities in a crisis situation. To avoid unexpected problems with the dependability of IT systems in the aftermath of a crisis it is important that such risks are identified and that measures can be taken to reduce the dependence on systems that could be unreliable. This paper describes two case studies exploring how Swedish municipalities incorporate IT systems in their emergency planning. The study focuses especially on how different actors within a municipality cooperate to analyse the risks of depending on IT systems in critical situations. The study shows that today there is much room for improvement, especially in the communication between IT personnel and emergency managers. Finally, this paper describes the requirements for a process improvement framework that can assist governmental actors in analysing and improving their dependency on IT systems in emergency management.

Abstract: Major electricity breakdowns like the Northeast Blackout (USA) in 2003 or the blackout in most parts of Western Europe in 2005, have shown the fundamental role of electricity in our everyday life. The experiences of these accidents show that power suppliers, firefighters, police, county administration and citizens face multifarious challenges in inter-organizational communication, information and coordination processes during coping and recovery work. In this work-in-progress paper we describe early research dealing with inter-organizational issues in emergency management (EM). We are mainly focusing on supporting social practices in inter-organizational EM, for example collaborative interpretation of emergency situations, ad-hoc coordination or supporting citizen communication and helping routines. Identified from our experiences from related projects, discussions and literature studies, we suggest potential questions and future topics in user-driven software engineering processes for EM and domain specific problems, such as supporting citizen participation, coping with information uncertainties and quality variations or enhancing inter-organizational learning.

Abstract: Cell Broadcasting has been an existing feature of GSM, UMTS, CDMA and PDC for many years, which however is rarely used. It has three attributes that make it very good for Government to Citizen mass communications in emergencies. 1) It uses reserved capacity for this feature; traffic does not take its bandwidth. Therefore it works even if the cellular system is in full overload, as it always is during disasters. 2) It can place millions of text messages on mobile phone within seconds, and is scalable to any size of broadcast including international scale without any additional time penalty. Most mobile phones have the capability now, so there is no need to build more infrastructures or replace phones. 3) By selecting the individual cells to be used, specific areas can be targeted with different messages, so that people in one area can be asked to evacuate, while in another they can be advised to stay. The government of Holland is the first in the world to adopt the technology, which will be operational by May 2005.

Abstract: Managing accidents and crisis is a complex task, which is achieved by a large number of stakeholders. In order to identify appropriate responses to risk-prone situations, a classification in two categories has been proposed: risks of damage and risks of crisis (Wybo 2004). Risks of damage correspond to emergency management procedures and plans. Risks of crisis correspond to situations that escape from planning because of the overflow of the organization. Resilience of organizations is defined as their ability to resist to chaos and to maintain the situation under control. From the analysis of a large number of emergencies and crises caused by industrial and natural hazards, we try to identify what conditions increase the resilience of organizations. They have in common to increase the mutual knowledge of stakeholders about their strategies and roles and about the development of the situation.

Abstract: Emergency, situations characterized as high consequence, low probability, and short decision time, create a unique decision-making environment that must be conscientiously supported. Historically, one of the techniques business has used to improve complex processes is a maturity model. Organizations should create the capabilities to react to information sharing needs in advance, not react an ad hoc manner to the information crisis. Based on the IT-Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF), we detailed some aspects of this model from an information architectural perspective to examine a country wide emergency service. Although information system and information technology (ISIT) have been emphasized in emergency management system, architectural aspects- a structure emphasized semantic description however have been of limited considerations. We propose a framework to analyzing architectural aspects for information sharing that can help improve emergency response system. The framework is discussed and exemplified with a case study. We conclude that the proposed framework provides a deeper understanding of information in use from technical and managerial aspects during emergency response. Guideline for further improvement will be the focus in our future work.

Abstract: In Emergency Management and Business Continuity Planning, scenarios are a widely used tool. Existing scenario creation systems allow distributed groups to create scenarios together but have limited collaboration support. This study developed and evaluated a solution to provide various types of collaboration support around a knowledge structure at the core of a collaborative scenario creation system called Collario. Following the Design Science paradigm, it evolved through four iterations into a working prototype. Several evaluation methods, including protocol analysis and field study, were employed to evaluate the design effects and obtain user feedback. The results of the first field trial are described in this paper. They indicate that the system is useful to support creation and discussion of emergency scenarios in virtual teams and to share knowledge and experiences among geographically distributed emergency professionals and researchers. It was also found that the system is not hard to learn and use.

Abstract: Role Transferability is a basic requirement for emergency management systems. Role specification, relationship expression, and transfer regulations are critical elements of this requirement. This paper discusses the role transferability requirement for emergency management systems; emphasizes that role specification is an underlying mechanism for role transfer; proposes a revised E-CARGO (Environment-Class, Agent, Role, Group, Object) model for role transfer in a group; and presents an algorithm to validate role transfer while maintaining group viability.