Abstract: This paper investigates the relevance and assurance of information and system quality as requirements for information systems success during disaster management. Despite the many examples of poor information quality and poor system quality, research on the relevance and assurance of these requirements is sparse. In order to design successful information systems for disaster management, a context related understanding of the organizational and technical measures for achieving these requirements is necessary. Accordingly, the goal of this paper is to identify and confirm information and system quality requirements for the design of information systems for disaster management. The results of our interviews with information architects indicate that while information quality requirements are considered to be very relevant, these are hard to measure and assure, and that currently much effort is being put into improving system quality requirements such as interoperability and ease of use.

Abstract: Due to the increasing danger of terrorist attacks, it is necessary to determine the preventive effects of security measures installed in e.g. public transportation systems. Since, there is no common practice to determine the preventive effects; we developed two different methodologies to analyse those effects, both are suitable for the assessment of security measures. The first method is a semi-quantitative method based on expert-estimations combined with a modelled process of an attack.The second method models the scenarios using a multi-agent-based simulation framework. Simulating a large number of runs, it is possible to derive values for indicators of interest on statistical basis. We show the suitability of both methods by applying them on a practical example of a public transportation system. In this paper we introduce both methodologies, show an exemplary application and present the strengths and weaknesses and how they can be linked to get an increased benefit.

Abstract: In the USA the basic objective of local and state government's Emergency Operations Plans (EOP) is to implement mitigation measures to reduce the loss of life and property damage by the efficient mobilization and deployment of resources. The evacuation of citizens out of harms way either before an impeding disaster or after the occurrence of one is a critical component of any EOP. This document represents a summary of the Evacuation Plan designed for the City of New Orleans. Results of live field exercises conducted during the 2006 Hurricane Season and suggestions for improvement will be highlighted. The ideal Emergency Evacuation Tracking System will be designed to operate within a System of Systems framework with interfaces: to field personnel, emergency managers and logisticians operating in an Emergency Operations Center (EOC), with state and local government systems such as public information emergency hotline (311 Centers in the USA), asset tracking management systems and others.

Abstract: This paper presents preliminary analysis from a validation study of a novel emergency medicine command and control training and evaluation simulator: DIGEMERGO®. The simulated emergency scenario was a surge capacity event at a generic emergency department, in which the participants took on a management role as the emergency department?s coordinating head nurse. A between group validation design with medical expert and novice participants was used. Initial analysis examined three triage measures associated with surge capacity management performance: time to triage, amount of patients triaged, and triage accuracy. The results show that experts were significantly more accurate at triaging in-hospital patients, but not incoming trauma patients. No significant differences in time or number of patients triaged was found. These initial results partially indicate simulator validity, but trauma patient triage accuracy suffered from a confounding variable in the triage system used. Analysis of additional measures is undergoing to further investigate validity claims.

Abstract: One of the important aspects of the crisis management consists in a comprehensive analysis of the impacts generated and their associated cost. The capacity to carry out an efficient holistic management, through the development of preventive measures and response programs relies on a proper estimation of impacts which helps to mitigate the harshness or can even avoid impacts in face of future crises. The aim of this paper is to analyse existing methodologies for natural disasters' impact evaluation, the identification of the different impact categories as well as the explanation of a natural disasters impact framework, which includes a list of indicators for a correct impact assessment. The framework also analyses the evolution of impacts, that is, how immediate impacts can also generate delayed impacts.

Abstract: In the event of natural disasters and extreme events like storms, floods and earthquakes, not only people, residential buildings and infrastructure, but also industry can be seriously affected. Direct losses to installations as well as indirect losses e.g. interruption of production can cause severe damage to companies and the economy as a whole. For a comparative and quantitative risk assessment and as a prerequisite for emergency planning and crisis management (e.g. planning of mitigation measures), a financial appraisal of industrial assets at risk is needed. This paper presents the reference installation approach which is a methodology that allows a consistent and transparent assessment of individual industrial asset values. In this bottom up approach due to the consideration of the heterogeneity of various industrial sectors, the obtained results can be depicted for a detailed spatial distribution and on a high degree of accuracy.

Abstract: This paper discusses the impact of different dimensions of risk perception on people?s decision to take protective measures against natural hazards. Initial basis of the analysis was the winter storm XAVER which affected huge parts of Northern Europe including Berlin, Germany on 5 December 2013. Preliminary results of a representative online survey within the Berlin population show that affective variables such as fear of severe weather and confidence in weather forecasts showed a significant effect on people?s decision to take protective action. Contrary, high experience of natural hazards did not necessarily lead to action.

Abstract: Concepts such as trust, shared understanding, cultural differences, mental workload, and organizational structure all impact upon the effectiveness of an organization (e.g., Tindale & Kameda, 2000), and even more so in the context of large scale multinational operations (e.g, Smith, Granlund, & Lindgen, 2010). In order to study these concepts we plan a multinational, distributed experiment with participants from three nations collaborating in the same virtual environment: Canadian, British, and Swedish participants will work together as part of a multinational MTS to deal with a complex task and gain control of a crisis situation. Empirical research on MTS remains limited (see, e.g., DeChurch & Marks, 2006) particularly at the multinational level where the investigation of MTS has been so far focused on case studies and exercises (e.g., Goodwin, Essens, & Smith, 2012). Therefore, there is a need to empirically study multinational MTS in order to assess the specific issues that multinational operations face, notably cultural and languages differences. The simulation environment used as experimental platform for this project is C3Fire (www.c3fire.org, Granlund & Granlund, 2011). C3Fire creates an environment whereby teams must work together to resolve a crisis in the firefighting domain, with the goal of evacuating people in critical areas, putting out the forest fire, and protecting buildings and other areas of value from the burning forest fire. This platform makes it possible to study participants' collaborative processes when dealing with a set of crisis scenarios in the context of a simulated emergency response situation. To deal efficiently with the crisis management operation, participants need to prioritize between different objectives, identify and protect critical areas, and plan and implement activities based on given resources. All these tasks are distributed between team members, compelling participants to exchange information and coordinate within and between teams to execute the task. The task is divided into three areas of responsibility as follows: 1) Information and Planning, responsible for situation assessment and providing the operating picture; 2) Operation and Logistic, responsible for intervention and resource management; and 3) Search and Rescue, responsible for research and management of civilians. C3Fire is designed to: 1) achieve an optimal compromise between internal and external validity; 2) show flexibility in scenario configuration (spectrum of units and roles – including search and rescue functions; Tremblay et al., 2010), allowing researchers to capture emergency response and crisis management and rapid response planning; 3) be highly configurable for testing many different types of teams (e.g., hierarchical vs. horizontal organizations); and 4) readily provide objective, non-intrusive metrics for assessing teamwork effectiveness (including macrocognitive functions and team processes) as well as quantitative measures of task performance (that take into account conflicting mission goals). © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: Understanding critical infrastructures and in particular protecting them in case of natural or man-made threats or disasters is the objective of our research. As use case, the security of the power supply in the year 2030 for the city of Karlsruhe was selected. This scenario contains interdependencies between the electrical power grid and IT components as well as critical infrastructures such as water supply and health care. To simulate the critical infrastructure, their dependencies and potential measures to mitigate effects, agent based simulation models have been developed and applied. The ultimate objective of the research activity is to develop a holistic analysis framework to quantify and evaluate requirements and design decisions of the many players in such complex infrastructures.