Abstract: While different governments worldwide have published sets of recommendations-or even laws-for increasing preparedness, a reference framework to assess the level of compliance of organizations is still to come. For instance, emergency plans often remain stored in closets where they stay until some emergency or major legal change occurs. Consequently, achieving actual preparedness is difficult to assess. QuEP is a framework for the assessment and improvement of the management of emergency plans within organizations. It is inspired by the Total Quality Management strategy, and provides a hierarchy of emergency plan management maturity levels. The aim of QuEP is to guide organizations to assess and improve their emergency preparedness by following a set of principles, practices and techniques at the technical, human and strategic levels. In this paper, we show the model underlying the framework, and give details of the current framework evaluation processes.

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: An emergency plan is an important artifact used throughout emergencies. Therefore, it is crucial that this plan covers the different scenarios faced by emergency team and that the prescribed procedures generate the desired results. To achieve these goals, emergency plans need to be exhaustively tested prior to its adoption. Emergency teams usually use simulation to test plans, but it is an expensive approach, demanding the building of complex environments and tools to get realistic situations. To be ready to go through a simulation exercise, a plan should not have many or critical mistakes, otherwise the simulation exercise would be wasted. We present a paired approach to evaluate emergency plans before simulation exercises, by applying software engineering testing techniques: Formal technical review (FTR) and mutation testing. The expected result is a plan more ready to go through simulation, as many of the mistakes are eliminated prior to simulation.

Abstract: Emergency plans are developed to serve as a basis for response actions required in real situations. However, plan development is not an easy task and usually relies on complex processes. Due to the uncertainty of emergencies, one of the most challenging tasks is the development of possible courses of action. To deal with this uncertainty, we propose the use of scenario techniques for the definition of courses of action. Specifically, we adopt the use of CIA-ISM scenario technique for structuring the chain of events that can occur in a crisis that would support planning teams to develop courses of action. A practical application of the methodology has been successfully conducted by an emergency planning team in Brazil. The practical application of the CIA-ISM process was supported by a software artifact called CAEPlan. Lessons learned about the empirical application of both the methodology and the software artifact are presented.

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.

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.

Abstract: It is common knowledge that having a relevant disaster preparedness plan is helpful for saving lives and money during an actual crisis. However, few individuals and families have a plan in the United States. Less than 10% of US states provide online resources for individuals and families to develop customized basic disaster plans. Those states sometimes offer additional information particular to their areas. However, existing online resources could be extended nationally by automatically providing additional plan information based on localized threats (e.g. climate, terrorism, etc.) within a geographical area. Wilberforce University has designed a solution called Wilberforce's Information Library Boosting Emergency Response (WILBER) which utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to automatically generate information based on localized threats within a geographical area to extend a basic disaster preparedness plan for individuals and families. WILBER combines current and historical information from Geographical Information Systems (GIS), risk assessment, wireless sensors, and computing.