The RESCUE disaster portal for disasters and emergency response (original) (raw)

On-Demand Information Portals for Disaster Situations

2007 IEEE Intelligence and Security Informatics, 2007

This paper describes our work on developing technology for rapidly assembling information portals that provide integrated access to and analysis of information from multiple sources in the case of any disaster. Many recent disasters (the S.E. Asian Tsunamis, the London subway bombings, the Katrina hurricane, to name a few) have demonstrated that a lot of valuable information becomes available in the hours and days immediately following the disaster, and such information is indeed valuable to disaster managers or even citizens in their response. In this paper we describe our work on developing information portals for disasters in general; we describe many key information processing capabilities and challenges that we consider important in such portals and also describe our approach to developing such capabilities.

Disaster Prevention and Rescue Information Service Platforms

International Journal of Automation and Smart Technology, 2011

Because of its special hydrology and physiographic environmental conditions, Taiwan experiences a wide range of natural disasters, such as typhoons, floods, slope collapses, debris flows, and earthquakes, resulting in the loss of many lives and properties. Integration of disaster-related information, such as data and models, and the analysis and application of the information are crucial to reduce the damage caused by natural disasters. Therefore, the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction introduced the information service platform technology of the Research Development and Evaluation Commission to integrate the information of related ministerial departments for added value and use. Related technologies have integrated information of disaster prevention and rescues, assisted the government in disaster prevention and rescue, and effectively reduced the time required for information integration. Additionally, the added value of information applications enabled situational analysis and process handling during natural disasters. This study uses responses to typhoons as examples, and describes how the service application platform of disaster prevention and rescue is used to integrate various data in the response processes and employs related systems to provide users real-time information as a reference for subsequent decision-making.

Challenges in information systems for disaster recovery and response

2008

Disaster recovery and response require a timely coordination of the emergency services. IT-technology provides a tremendous potential to increase efficiency and effectiveness in this area by propagating information efficiently to all the right locations. In this paper we sketch requirements and describe challenges for an integrated disaster management communication and information system, addressing in particular networking, configuration, scheduling and data management issues.

Riskr: a web 2.0 platform to monitor and share disaster information

Disaster management that uses web-based technology to enhance user collaboration around disasters is an emergent field. A number of dedicated 'disaster portals' exist but they do not integrate large social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. These social networking sites can facilitate the analysis and sharing of collective intelligence around disaster information on a far greater scale by increasing accessibility to, and the use of, a disaster portal. This paper presents the 'Riskr' project, which applies a low-technological solution to creating a disaster portal fed by social networking messages. The system has been implemented using Twitter and tested by users to determine the feasibility. Results suggest the combination of online services and interoperability between disaster portals; and social networks can further enhance disaster management initiatives as 70.5% of the users were able to estimate the correct location of a disaster (e.g. fallen power lines, fire).

Pervasive Software Environments for Supporting Disaster Responses

Internet Computing …, 2008

In complex emergency scenarios, teams from various emergency-response organizations must collaborate. These teams include both first responders, such as police and fire departments, and those operators who coordinate the effort from operational centers. The Workpad architecture consists of a front-and a back-end layer. The front-end layer is composed of several front-end teams of first responders, and the back-end layer is an integrated peer-to-peer network that lets front-end teams collaborate through information exchange and coordination. Team members at the front end carry PDAs, with team leaders' PDAs equipped with gateway communication technologies that let them communicate with the back-end centers. E mergency or crisis management includes the coordinated activities involved in preparing, supporting, and rebuilding society when natural or humanmade disasters occur. Such activities consist of five phases: planning, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The European Workpad project (www.workpad -project.eu) aims to provide a software and communication infrastructure to support operators facing an emergency. The project focuses on the response and short-term recovery phases -the most critical phases in disaster management -although many of our results are applicable to other phases. Response-phase activities include assisting victims, stabilizing the situation, speeding recovery actions, and reducing the probability of secondary damage. Short-term recovery activities include returning vital lifesupport systems to a minimum operating standard.

MADIS: A Multimedia-Aided Disaster Information Integration System for Emergency Management

Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing, 2012

With the proliferation of smart devices, disaster responders and community residents are capturing footage, pictures and video of the disaster area with mobile phones and wireless tablets. This multimedia disaster situation information is critical for assisting emergency management (EM) personnel to effectively respond in a timely manner. Currently, however the data is not integrated in incident command systems where situation reports, incidence action plans, etc. are being held. Therefore, we have designed and developed a Multimedia-Aided Disaster information Integration System (MADIS), which utilizes advanced data mining techniques to analyze situation reports and pictures as well as text captured in the field and automatically link the reports directly to relevant multimedia content. Specifically, a dynamic hierarchical image classification approach is proposed to categorize disaster images into different subjects by fusing image and text information. Situation reports are analyzed using advanced document processing techniques and then associated with processed multimedia data. In order to seamlessly incorporate user interactive activities for improving information integration, a user feedback processing scheme is proposed to refine the association between situation reports and images as well as the affinity among images. The system is developed on Apple's mobile operating system (iOS) and runs on iPad tablets, and its usefulness is evaluated by domain experts from the local EM department.

Situational Awareness Technologies for Disaster Response

Integrated Series In Information Systems, 2008

Responding to natural or man-made disasters, in a timely and effective manner, can reduce deaths and injuries, contain or prevent secondary disasters, and reduce the resulting economic losses and social disruption. During a crisis, responding organizations confront grave uncertainties in making critical decisions. They need to gather situational information (e.g., state of the civil, transportation and information infrastructures), together with information about available resources (e.g., medical facilities, rescue and law enforcement units). There is a strong correlation between the accuracy, timeliness, and reliability of the information available to the decision-makers, and the quality of their decisions. Dramatic improvements in the speed and accuracy at which information about the crisis flows through the disaster response networks has the potential to revolutionize crisis response, saving human lives and property.

Developing a System for Information Management in Disaster Relief - Methodology and Requirements

ISCRAM, 2010

This paper discusses our ongoing work on a system for collecting, managing and distributing relevant information in disaster relief operations. It describes the background and conditions under which the system is being developed and employed. We present our methodology, the requirements and current functionality of the system and the lessons learned in exercises and training, involving a large number of international disaster management experts. We found that the viability of this kind of tool is determined by three main factors, namely reliability, usability and frugality. The system has gone through many prototype iterations and has matured towards becoming operational in a specific type of mission, i.e. assessment missions for large scale natural and man-made disasters. This paper aims at making a wider audience of disaster management experts aware of that system and the support it may provide to their work. Other researchers and developers may find our experience useful for creating systems in similar domains.