Abstract: This article aims at presenting a whole approach of Information Systems interoperability management in a crisis management cell. We propose a Mediation Information System (MIS) to help the crisis cell partners to design, run and manage the workflows of the response to a crisis situation. The architecture of the MIS meets the need of low coupling between the partners' Information System components and the need of agility for a such platform. Based on the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the Event Driven Architecture (EDA) principles which, combined to the Complex Event Processing (CEP) principles, it will leads to an easier orchestration, choreography and real-time monitoring of the workflows' activities, and even allows the automated agility of the crisis response on-the-fly-we consider agility as the ability of the processes to remain consistent with the response to the crisis-. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: Every 24 hours a member of the United States (US) Armed Forces commits suicide, while every hour a US veteran takes his own life. These statistics illuminate a deeply-rooted social crisis which eludes experts and military leaders to this day. Billions of dollars invested in suicide prevention seem to offer little relief for active duty servicemen and veterans alike. Military suicide is framed as a wicked problem and the new and exciting theory of Chronic Emotional Atrophy (CEA) is proposed to help explain causes of suicidal ideation in the military. A holistic crisis management strategy via information systems is presented in this work. Depressive symptoms exhibited by military members in emotionally suppressed environments closely parallel those phenomena exhibited by medical patients suffering from frontal lobe damage. The prospective psychiatric information system solution provides frontal lobe stimulation (FLS) to mitigate CEA and suicidal ideation.

Abstract: In public safety communications the first responders are getting directions about the tactical action plan with multicast voice whereas they can report back to the dispatcher with unicast voice. In this paper, the aim is to find the maximum number of voice calls for situation reporting in the presence of multicast voice for tactical coordination. In order to increase the reliability of our analysis we verify our simulator against a test bed prototype consisting of three 802.11 terminals. The simulation study is applied within a mobile cell. The proposed mobility model applies for initial deployment in emergency scenarios. We investigate the statistical properties of the model by simulations.

Abstract: After large-scale disasters, diverse partner agencies rely heavily on an information-sharing environment that supports collaborative work. In the U.S., this occurs under the Incident Command System (ICS), a structured organizational framework for coordinated action. We explore obstacles to information sharing and coordinationobserved at a county-level Emergency Operations Center (EOC) operating under ICS during the response phase of a large-scale regional disaster exercise. Textual observations collected in situ are analyzed for both the effect/manifestation and cause/source of barriers to information sharing. Two-thirds of barriers that manifest as computational issues are not caused by technology breakdowns, and a third caused by unclear processes manifest as computational issues. Overall, obstacles to collaborative work that appear to be related to computational issues are generally attributable to non-technical causes. This indicates that resources directed at improving collaborative management of disasters by enhancing technological capabilities are likely to be misdirected.

Abstract: Social media together with still growing social media communities has become a powerful and promising solution in crisis and emergency management. Previous crisis events have proved that social media and mobile technologies used by citizens (widely) and public services (to some extent) have contributed to the post-crisis relief efforts. The iSAR+ EU FP7 project aims at providing solutions empowering citizens and PPDR (Public Protection and Disaster Relief) organizations in online and mobile communications for the purpose of crisis management especially in search and rescue operations. This paper presents the results of survey aiming at identification of preliminary end-user requirements in the close interworking with end-users across Europe.

Abstract: Because of the apparent ineffectiveness of current disaster plans, we focus our research on modeling emergency response activities. If we can capture the crucial concepts of emergency response in a mathematical framework and apply this framework to construct disaster plans, then we pave the way for the development of automated decisions support systems for emergency response.

Abstract: Microblogs are an opportunity for scavenging critical information such as sentiments. This information can be used to detect rapidly the sentiment of the crowd towards crises or disasters. It can be used as an effective tool to inform humanitarian efforts, and improve the ways in which informative messages are crafted for the crowd regarding an event. Unique characteristics of microblogs (lack of context, use of jargon etc) in Tweets expressed by a message-sharing social network during a disaster response require special handling to identify sentiment. We present a systematic evaluation of approaches to accurately and precisely identify sentiment in these Tweets. This paper describes sentiment detection expressed in 3698 Tweets, collected during the September 2010, San Bruno, California gas explosion and resulting fires. The data collected was manually coded to benchmark our techniques. We start by using a library of words with annotated sentiment, SentiWordNet 3.0, to detect the basic sentiment of each Tweet. We complemented that technique by adding a comprehensive list of emoticons, a sentiment based dictionary and a list of out-of-vocabulary words that are popular in brief, online text communications such as lol, wow, etc. Our technique performed 27% better than Bayesian Networks alone, and the combination of Bayesian networks with annotated lists provided marginal improvements in sentiment detection than various combinations of lists. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: Information-intensive services for global crisis situations management can no longer be based on local information only. A global picture is required to be able to make informed and reliable local decisions. It takes also to know how the local decisions one country may take will affect the others. Indeed, each country, city or community needs the whole picture and the key facts in managing the situation in their local area. Therefore, we should provide a proven solution to identify, analyze and mix the relevant information to support informed local decision based on both global and local information. In this paper, we introduce a novel design pattern to face this challenge of making informed local decisions. We also provide two real life examples illustrating the needs of the design pattern.

Abstract: Disasters often lead to other kinds of disasters, forming multi-hazards such as landslides, which may be caused by earthquakes, rainfalls, water erosion, among other reasons. Effective detection and management of multihazards cannot rely only on one information source. In this paper, we evaluate a landslide detection system LITMUS, which combines multiple physical sensors and social media to handle the inherent varied origins and composition of multi-hazards. LITMUS integrates near real-time data from USGS seismic network, NASA TRMM rainfall network, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. The landslide detection process consists of several stages of social media filtering and integration with physical sensor data, with a final ranking of relevance by integrated signal strength. Applying LITMUS to data collected in October 2013, we analyzed and filtered 34.5k tweets, 2.5k video descriptions and 1.6k image captions containing landslide keywords followed by integration with physical sources based on a Bayesian model strategy. It resulted in detection of all 11 landslides reported by USGS and 31 more landslides unreported by USGS. An illustrative example is provided to demonstrate how LITMUS' functionality can be used to determine landslides related to the recent Typhoon Haiyan.

Abstract: We propose an OWL/SWRL enabled ontological environment which can play a role in reporting and decision making in Humanitarian Crises (HC). We use (5WH): WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY and HOW, as the main vehicle for gathering information for decision making. We implement the semantics of (5WH) through OWL models and perform reasoning with SWRL rules, in order to support decision making and create more efficient Humanitarian Response (HR). Our case study shows the feasibility of the proposal and its outcome. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: The undefined flow of execution of activities in an evaluation process hampers its implementation. A consistent evaluation process defines interrelated methodological steps that make it easier for the evaluator to lead the process. This article presents a process model for the evaluation of simulated field exercises in the emergency domain, including their sub processes and activities. The proposed model was derived from observations made during real situations of a simulated evacuation exercise of communities in high-risk areas in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). The motivation came from the finding that the assessment of simulated field exercises is conducted by completing an activity report that does not follow a structural model, an evaluation program or a formal standard. The results of this research show the experts' satisfaction with the application of the model proposed for the development of an evaluation process. The same occurs when comparing to reports currently used by them for this purpose.

Abstract: This paper describes the WIPER system, a proof of concept prototype, and progress made on its development to date. WIPER is intended to provide emergency response managers with an integrated system that detects possible emergencies from cellular communication data, attempts to predict the development of emergency situations, and provides tools for evaluating possible courses of action in dealing with emergency situations. We describe algorithms for detecting anomalies in streaming cellular communication network data, the implementation of a simulation system that validates running simulations with new real world data, and a web-based front end to the WIPER system. We also discuss issues relating to the real-time aggregation of data from the cellular service provider and its distribution to components of the WIPER system.