Abstract: In this article, we briefly describe a crisis management case that has been chosen (in the European funded project PLAY) to test the federated-open-trusted platform for event-driven interaction between services. A description of such complex use case in natural language is obviously limited and should be completed with a formal description methodology to gather the necessary knowledge. Considering our technical requirements we suggest to combine the S-Cube approach with the model driven architecture approach to propose a complete and structured case study description framework. Then this article presents a nuclear crisis case modeled according to these guidelines.

Abstract: The goal of this article is to introduce a platform (called Agility Service) that gathers and analyses data coming from both crisis response and crisis field by using the principles of Complex Event Processing. As a crisis situation is an unstable phenomenon (by nature or by effect of the applied response), the crisis response may be irrelevant after a while: lack of resources, arrival of a new stakeholder, unreached objectives, over-crisis, etc. Gathering data, analyze and aggregate it to deduce relevant information concerning the current crisis situation, and making this information available to the crisis cell to support decision making: these are the purposes of the described platform. A use case based on the Fukushima's nuclear accident is developed to illustrate the use of the developed prototype.

Abstract: Complex information and communication systems present a special challenge to system designers because these are generally deployed as large, distributed systems with diverse user groups. Crisis response and management organizations in particular expect systems to be interoperable, resilient, flexible and provide lasting benefit. Currently, systems such as Virtual USA (Department of Homeland Security) and WatchKeeper (United States Coast Guard) seek to create common situational awareness for all participating agencies in security and incident response operations. We propose adaptive development as a system development model to build upon the ideas of systems such as Virtual USA and WatchKeeper in order to create sustainable and adaptable systems. Adaptive development supports ongoing improvement through user-driven design and modification in the target environment. An internet-based dashboard demonstrated during a United States Coast Guard Sector Seattle incident response exercise serves as an emergent case study for the adaptive model.

Abstract: When disaster strikes, the emerging task environment requires relief agencies to transform from autonomous mono-disciplinary organizations into interdependent multidisciplinary decision-making units. Evaluation studies reveal that adaptation of information management to the changing task environment is difficult resulting in poor information quality, indicating information was incorrect, outdated or even unavailable to relief workers. In this paper, we adopt a theory-driven approach to develop a set of information management roles and dynamic capabilities for disaster management. Building on the principles of advance structuring and dynamic adjustment, we develop a set of roles and capabilities, which we illustrate and extend using two field studies in the Netherlands. By studying regional relief workers in action, we found that in tactical disaster response decisionmaking units, several information management roles are not addressed and that information managers are preoccupied with information gathering and reporting, whereas information quality assurance is not on the agenda.

Abstract: We explore the nature and benefits of smart spaces from the perspective of the emergency management user, propose a design vocabulary and reference architecture for constructing feasible, robust and flexible smart spaces for crisis management, and offer some examples of how smart-space approaches might support crisis management. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: Recent disasters have shown that wireless sensors and unmanned systems are increasingly becoming a valuable aid for first responders. Depending on the kind of incident and its extent, different assets are to be used. The more diverse these assets are, the more complex their simultaneous use and coordination. Therefore, integrated solutions are needed which comprise all necessary components such as power supply, communication infrastructure, data acquisition and processing, decision support and information dissemination. In this paper, an architecture for an open framework is proposed and its advantages over dedicated solutions are discussed. The flexibility of the universal control station presented here is demonstrated using the example of integrating a smartphone as an additional mobile sensor. © 2012 ISCRAM.

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.

Abstract: This paper describes the design of an Internet of Things (IoT) system for building evacuation. There are two main
design decisions for such systems: i) specifying the platform on which the IoT intelligent components should be
located; and ii) establishing the level of collaboration among the components. For safety-critical systems, such as
evacuation, real-time performance and evacuation time are critical. The approach aims to minimize computational
and evacuation delays and uses Queuing Network (QN) models. The approach was tested, by computer simulation,
on a real exhibition venue in Alan Turing Building, Italy, that has 34 sets of IoT sensors and actuators. Experiments
were performed that tested the effect of segmenting the physical space into different sized virtual cubes. Experiments
were also conducted concerning the distribution of the software architecture. The results show that using centralized
architectural pattern with a segmentation of the space into large cubes is the only feasible solution.

Abstract: This paper presents the results of our research on the development of a Dialog Action Manager-DAM as part of a complex crisis management system. Imagine the utility of such an automatic system to detect the crisis and to provide support to people in contexts similar to what happened recently at the underground in London and Madrid. Preventing and handling the scenarios of terrorism and other crisis are nowadays maybe the most important issues for a modern and safe society. In order to automate the crisis support, DAM simulates the behavior of an employee at the crisis centre handling telephone calls from human observers. Firstly, the system has to mimic the natural support for the paradigm 'do you hear me?' and next for the paradigm 'do you understand me?'. The people witnessing the crisis event as well as human experts provide reports and expertise according to their observations and knowledge on the crisis. The system knowledge and the data communication follow the XML format specifications. The system is centered on the results of our previous work on creating a user-centered multimodal reporting tool that works on mobile devices. In our paper we describe the mechanisms for creating an automatic DAM system that is able to analyze the user messages, to identify and track the crisis contexts, to support dialogs for crisis information disambiguation and to generate feedback in the form of advice to the users. The reasoning is done by using a data frame and rule based system architecture and an alternative Bayesian Network approach. In the paper we also present a series of experiments we have attempted in our endeavor to correctly identify natural solutions for the crisis situations.

Abstract: The most effective way to design an emergency management system matching user needs is to perform a User-Centered Design; it relies on continuous interactions with end-users in order to understand better and better how organizations are arranged during emergencies, which data are exchanged and which steps are performed by organizations to face disastrous events. In this paper we (i) illustrate the methodology used to collect the user requirements for the emergency management system developed in the European research project WORKPAD, and (ii) describe the WORKPAD high level architecture stemming from such requirements. Specifically, the methodology is applied in the context of Regional Civil Protection of Calabria (Italy) and is used as basis to provide more general user requirements for emergency management systems.

Abstract: Effective responses to emergency situations require accessing both information that is known ahead of time and information from emergent sources. Whereas emergency providers have succeeded in formalizing acquisition and distribution of information from pre-existing sources, emergent and unconventional sources remain a challenge, especially in the context of rapid system-of-systems integration. The Rich Feeds project demonstrates the use of the Rich Services architectural pattern to incorporate data capture facilities into a framework that attends to crosscutting concerns such as authentication, authorization, encryption, and governance. By organizing a system-of-systems, Rich Services fosters the rapid incorporation of novel data sources while promoting scalability, low overall system risk, and fine grained policy definition and evaluation. In this paper, we demonstrate Rich Feeds' use of Rich Services in accessing multiple data streams during research and disaster drills. Additional opportunities include adding data sources and extraction methods, and increasing flexibility of policy definition and evaluation.

Abstract: Fast and effective disaster management requires access to a multitude of heterogeneous, distributed, and quickly changing data sets, such as maps, satellite images, or governmental databases. In the last years, also the information created by affected persons on web sites such as flickr.com or blogger.com became an important and very quickly adapting source of information. We developed HUODINI, a prototype system for the flexible integration and visu-alization of heterogeneous data sources for disaster management. HUODINI is based on Semantic Web technologies, and in particular RDF, to offer maximal flexibility in the types of data sources it can integrate. It supports a hybrid push/pull approach to cater for the requirements of fast-changing sources, such as news feeds, and maximum performance for querying the integrated data set. In this paper, we describe the design goals underlying our approach, its architecture, and report on first experiences with the system.

Abstract: WORKPAD (EU STREP project FP6-2005-IST-5-034749) is an experimental platform for Crisis Response which adopts a decentralized, event-driven approach to overcome problems and limitations of centralized systems. The flexibility of P2P networking is relevant when different organizations must get rapidly integrated the one another, without resorting on standardized ontologies and centralized middleware components. This paper illustrates the main features of the Information Integration platform we've designed. A number of relevant technical and theoretical issues related to decentralized platforms are discussed in the light of specific needs of Crisis Response.