Abstract: Evaluation and testing are major steps in the development of any information system, particularly if it is to be used in high-risk contexts such as conflicts. While thus far there are various approaches for testing against technology requirements; usability or usefulness, there is a lack of a comprehensive evaluation framework that combines the three elements. The lack of such a framework and commonly agreed standards constitutes a barrier for innovation, and at the same time imposes risks to responders if the technology is introduced without proper testing. This paper aims to close this gap. Based on a reviewing of evaluation methods and measurement metrics, we design a comprehensive evaluation framework including common code quality testing metrics, usability testing methods, subjective usefulness questionnaires, and performance indicators. We demonstrate our approach by using the example of an integrated system for the safety and security of humanitarian missions, and we highlight how our approach allows measuring the system?s quality and usefulness.

Abstract: Large crisis scenarios involve several actors, acting at the blunt-end of the process, such as rescue team directors, and at the sharp-end, such as firefighters. All of them have different perspectives on the crisis situation, which could be either coherent, alternative or complementary. This heterogeneity of perceptions hinders situational awareness, which is defined as the achievement of an overall picture on the above-mentioned crisis situation. We define knowledge fusion as the process of integrating multiple knowledge entities to produce actionable knowledge, which is consistent, accurate, and useful for the purpose of the analysis. Hence, we present a conceptual modelling approach to gather and integrate knowledge related to large crisis scenarios from locally-distributed sources that can make it actionable. The approach builds on the WAx framework for cyber-socio-technical systems and aims at classifying and coping with the different knowledge entities generated by the involved operators. The conceptual outcomes of the approach are then discussed in terms of open research challenges for knowledge fusion in crisis scenarios.

Abstract: Web 2.0 can be viewed as a platform where users can develop their own web applications. It is also characterized by a vast amount of user-generated contents presenting spatial and temporal components, by means of associated metadata. These metadata has been successfully exploited to generate map-based mashups (web applications gathering data from different sources) facing different kind of crisis situations, ranging from natural disasters (earthquakes, wildfires, floods...) to human-made disasters (terrorist attacks, school shootings, conflicts...). The social and collaborative dimensions of the Web 2.0 can be also exploited for managing crisis-related information. We present here a survey of current crisis-related mashups we employed to extract design dimensions and provide a conceptual framework that can be used: A) to understand current systems and; b) to design next generation of crisis-related mashups. We propose the eStoryS system as an example of application developed following the design principles presented in this paper. On the basis of our analysis, we believe that the design dimensions posited here provide useful insights for the design of novel web mashups in the emergency management domain.

Abstract: In this paper we take a system theoretic perspective to the process of security risk identification in the context of city councils. Based on this approach, we construct a framework that helps to identify risks. We analyze why this methodological framework is suitable for the risk identification process. Research in fifty Flemish city councils reveals the usefulness of our approach of combining a perceived vs. objective perspective with a technical vs. organizational one. We believe such a framework offers a workable tool for dealing with IS security risks in a systems thinking way.

Abstract: Small island developing states (SIDs) face a range of underlying issues that increase their vulnerability and risk to disaster. This commonly results in a lack of available, reliable and actionable data for both island nations as well as their insular communities. Simultaneously, issues such as climate change make their riskscapes unique and challenging to mitigate, forcing the need to find methods of improving community resiliency. This paper uses qualitative interviews conducted in the post-disaster phase of the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season to highlight the main issues experienced by communities. It then uses these, as well as literature guidance, to create a Lessons Learnt Framework (LLF) designed to challenge underlying assumptions, assess management efforts, discuss and record community experiences, and to feedback social capital into vulnerable communities to support future community resilience.

Abstract: In a rapidly globalizing world, disasters and the way in which they are managed are changing. Social media, in conjunction with other online resources, now provide a wealth of information throughout the lifecycle of disasters and are relied upon by individuals and emergency responders alike. The study of such data as a lens for analysis has proved valuable in recent years, with many contributing to targeted emergency response protocols and improved methods for the management strategies of future crises. This study seeks to make a similar contribution by reporting on the use of such data for situational awareness during the case of hurricane Irma, which occurred between September and August 2017. Using a mixed methods approach the paper examines data from social media such as Twitter, as well as other online sources such as blogs and news media, to provide original insight into the disaster. A conceptual framework is then applied to determine the uses and users of social media, and to identify how these change throughout the course of the disaster, thus demonstrating situational awareness over time. The paper concludes with proposed improvements for disaster management and emergency response for future similar disasters, specifically in the hurricane season, in addition to more generalized hazards which are predicted to increase in their frequency and severity due to underlying issues such as climate change.

Abstract: Having the right information at the right time is crucial to make decisions during emergency responses. To fulfill this requirement, emergency management systems must provide emergency managers with knowledge management and visualization tools. The goal is twofold: on one hand, to organize knowledge coming from different sources, mainly the emergency response plans (the formal knowledge) and the information extracted from the emergency development (the contextual knowledge); on the other hand, to enable effective access to information. Formal and contextual knowledge sets are mostly disjoint; however, there are cases in which a formal knowledge piece may be updated with some contextual information, constituting what we call the composite knowledge. In this paper, we extend a knowledge framework with the notion of composite knowledge, and use spatial hypertext to visualize this type of knowledge. We illustrate our proposal with a case study on accessing to information during an emergency response in an underground transportation system.

Abstract: This paper presents an intelligent system facilitating better-informed decision making under severe uncertainty as found in emergency management. The construction of decision-relevant scenarios, being coherent and plausible descriptions of a situation and its future development, is used as a rationale for collecting, organizing, filtering and processing information for decision making. The development of scenarios is geared to assessing decision alternatives, thus avoiding time-consuming analysis and processing of irrelevant information. The scenarios are constructed in a distributed setting allowing for a flexible adaptation of reasoning (principles and processes) to the problem at hand and the information available. This approach ensures that each decision can be founded on a coherent set of scenarios, which was constructed using the best expertise available within a limited timeframe. Our theoretical framework is demonstrated in a distributed decision support system by orchestrating both automated systems and human experts into workflows tailored to each specific problem.

Abstract: Emergency Management, like other fields of Operations, consists of information, communication and decision making. Thanks to the pervasiveness of real time networked infrastructures, such as the internet and the web, new models of operations are emerging, designed to leverage the aggregate the power of 'collective intelligence' and 'distributed action' facilitated by 'open world' systems environments. In order to develop effective information systems capable of supporting the distributed nature of emerging 'architectures of participation', it is necessary to devise adequate 'semantic structures', which in turn rely on sound and explicit conceptual frameworks, such as ontologies. However, there aren't enough 'ontologies' in the public domain that can be referenced to establish compatibility of architectures and serve as guidelines for the development of open, neutral and accountable information systems. In this paper we a) describe and analyse the 'distributed' and 'networked' nature of emergency operations b) put forward the notion information systems to support of emergency management today should be modeled on 'distributed' and networked organizational structures, and that ontologies in this domain should be built accordingly.

Abstract: The current Emergency Services landscape is characterized by a number of systems and networks that are isolated in nature, thus making information sharing impractical, if not impossible. Such an environment does not promote ease of information sharing, and each incident highlights the need for efficient collaboration and coordination, and the need for a holistic internetwork-a series of virtual interconnected networks-approach. In other words, it requires an overall framework that looks at safety as an overall enterprise, (albeit one with thousands of independent agency owners), with the strategic goal to facilitate greater collaboration and effectiveness of operations, and to ensure a streamlined and efficient prevention of, response to, and recovery from all-hazards. 1 Adopting a Service-Oriented enterprise approach is extremely useful and has number of advantages in such an environment. This paper defines a framework-in the context of an enterprise-an envisioned Emergency Services Enterprise Framework, and identifies the key elements of this framework.

Abstract: Our research is aimed at developing a quantitative approach for assessing supply chain resilience to disasters, a topic that has been discussed primarily in a qualitative manner in the literature. For this purpose, we propose a simulation-based framework that incorporates concepts of resilience into the process of supply chain design. In this context, resilience is defined as the ability of a supply chain system to reduce the probabilities of disruptions, to reduce the consequences of those disruptions, and to reduce the time to recover normal performance. The decision framework incorporates three determinants of supply chain resilience (density, complexity, and node criticality) and discusses their relationship to the occurrence of disruptions, to the impacts of those disruptions on the performance of a supply chain system and to the time needed for recovery. Different preliminary strategies for evaluating supply chain resilience to disasters are identified, and directions for future research are discussed.

Abstract: This paper is a position paper, presenting an original but very anticipative and mainly imaginative vision of the evolution of the crisis management domain. After analyzing the options to make the past evolutions of that domain somehow explainable (mainly by analyzing the data of all the articles of the last fifteen editions of the ISCRAM conference), the paper aims at providing a framework to assess and evaluate the maturity of the domain of crisis management. Moreover, this framework is also used to tentatively infer some future evolutions and some directions that could be relevant, dangerous, tricky or of great benefit for the crisis management domain. These future trends are mainly based on the current maturity of crisis management (according to the proposed framework) and current or future influential practices, technologies or threats. It will be necessary to wait for fifteen years to see if these bets should be considered as accurate.

Abstract: In this contribution we present an analysis of passenger trajectories in an urban transportation hub. We collected an extensive amount of empirical data consisting of both gate and individual stalking observation in the central station of Cologne. Three different data mining algorithms are used to analyze this data, producing both data that may be used as input for simulation frameworks, and, as an aside, visualizations of passenger movements that could be of high interest to transport and emergency managers. © 2012 ISCRAM.