Abstract: Disaster management and risk prevention in Algeria have undergone many changes in the recent years. Important efforts have been provided on the legal and organizational sides to set the right conditions for an integrated and collaborative framework for disaster management in the country. The aim is to address the lack of information sharing, coordination and collaboration among the involved organizations. However, although the enhancement of the organizational arrangements, several problems persist mainly related to the implementation of these measures. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose an IT based platform in the field of risks prevention and disaster management (DM). This platform provides decision support, enables information sharing, helps to enhance public awareness regarding risks and disasters, supports communication and dissemination of information and alerts in disaster situations and facilitates the implementation of regulation related to disaster management.

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the changing task environment is difficult resulting in poor information quality, indicating information was incorrect, outdated or even unavailable to relief workers.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: Effective responsiveness to disasters requires the management of information in a network of autonomous response agencies. Yet, the information quality is often insufficient. Information is scattered throughout the network and needs to be collected from heterogeneous information sources. As such, adaptive information orchestration is the key to effective response. The aim of this paper is to develop a prescriptive, conceptual architecture guided by architectural principles for orchestration aimed at improving information quality. Information orchestration refers to an information architecture in which multiple orchestrators match information supply according to the information demand in order to assure a high information quality for relief workers. A primarily element is that information needs to be 'enriched' before it is provided to relief workers and necessary resources (human, information and technology) should be available to accomplish this. This should ensure that the right information will be delivered to the right persons at the right moment. Future research is aimed at detailing the concept of information orchestration.

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: In the past a lot of researchers have defined criteria to determine information quality. Various criteria and dimensions have been identified and examined in different contexts. But very few of them focused on information quality in the context of complex situations, especially in the domain of crisis management. These complex situations demand for an extensive level of information as a basis to the difficult decisions an officer-in-charge has to make. Therefore, if we want to support the decision-making of the leading officers through an at least semi-automated process, we need first of all to find a set of criteria to assess the information quality considering the special requirements of such complex situations. In this paper we describe our approach of defining a criteria set by identifying the characteristics of complex situations, then we analyze existing models of information quality and map their aggregated criteria to the identified characteristics and finally first results of interviews to evaluate the set through the involvement of domain experts are presented.

Abstract: Information sharing is crucial in responding to and managing crises. A great variety of organizations respond to crises, ranging from international organizations, through non-governmental organizations, commercial suppliers, government ministries, and the media, to individual volunteers. At best, they collaborate to combine their respective strengths in creating synergy. At worst, they deconflict their operations so that the one does not get in the way of the other. In either case, the organizations must communicate with one another. Previous research has shown that this communication takes the form of an information market. This paper considers the possible mechanisms for information markets in humanitarian and military coalitions. While there has been work on market mechanisms in the economics literature, this needs to be adapted for the exchange of information and information services instead of physical goods and services. This paper proposes a taxonomy of market mechanisms that is tailored to information sharing within coalitions. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: Good support for information sharing and processing is essential for successful crisis management. A crisis manager handles information from many different sources and collaborates with many different actors. This study is therefore focusing on specifying some needs and requirements for information support systems for crisis management command and control centres. The study is based on case studies and interviews in Sweden with the aim to understand how information processing best can be supported from a crisis manager's perspective. The needs and requirements found in the study can be used in future system design or improvement.

Abstract: We developed an intelligent information visualization tool to enable public health officials to detect healthrelated trends in any geographic area of interest, based on Twitter data. Monitoring emergent events such as natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and terrorism is vital for protecting public health. Our goal is to support situation awareness (SA) for personnel responsible for early detection and response to public health threats. To achieve this goal, our application identifies the most frequently tweeted illnesses in a ranked chart and map for a selected geographic area. Automated processes mine and filter health-related tweets, visualize changes in rankings over time, and present other keywords frequently associated with each illness. User-centered visualization techniques of monitoring, inspecting, exploring, comparing and forecasting supports all the three stages of SA. An evaluation conducted with experts in health-related domains provided significant insights about awareness of localized health trends and their practical use in their daily work.

Abstract: The semantics of things represent the central problem of the heterogeneous domain of emergency response. Both the communication between human actors and the interface between information systems face this hurdle with high impact on the efficiency in mission and time critical command and control processes. The integration of applications and information sharing based on semantic technologies promise added value for a solution to this problem. Therefore a model of the domain is essential; this paper contributes a domain ontology for fire protection. The scientific discussion as well as expert interviews built the basis for a new modeling approach. The selection of ontology languages is one of the important design issues presented in this paper.

Abstract: A major crisis or disaster attracts a response from multiple organizations. These organizations need to work together as a coalition. To do so effectively, they must share information. Differences in organizational culture give information a scarcity value, leading to the emergence of information markets. As the crisis progresses, organizations learn to work together, building up trust and lowering the “price” for information shared. Organizations that have worked together in previous crises have a price advantage. In short, the information sharing changes dynamically. Evolutionary game theory – And the minority game in particular – has been recently applied to markets in which physical goods are exchanged. This paper presents the first results from simulating an information sharing market in crisis response coalitions as a minority game.