Architecture for gathering and integrating collaborative information for decision support in emergency situations

Abstract

The involvement of citizens in supporting crisis situations is no longer a new phenomenon. In the past, the lack of data was one of the main barriers faced by public managers in the decision-making process. Today the situation has been reversed, such that the challenge faced is managing an excessive mass of data, which is totally dynamic and originating from different sources such as remote environmental sensors, social networks, response teams in the field. During an emergency response, the concern is no longer being able to collect data for a better understanding of the affected environment, but in knowing how to organise, aggregate and separate what is actually useful for crisis managers. This research proposes a collaborative information architecture that considers aspects from environmental complexity in the context of emergency scenarios, in order to support response teams with decision making, through gathering and integrating information that has originated from different media resources and, hence, enriching a decision team's 'current contextual knowledge' base.

A Systematic Review on the Use of Groupware Technologies in Emergency Management

“…In the past, lack of data was one of the main barriers faced by public managers in the decision-making process, however, today the situation has been reversed [22]. One of the biggest concerns in monitoring and planning actions in emergency situations is optimizing all the resources involved (time, personnel, material and others) to obtain the best possible result from all those involved (people or organizations), since the higher the level of preparedness, based on reliable information, the greater the likelihood of a successful outcome, that is, appropriate emergency treatment with the least possible impact on the victims involved, or without occurrence of casualties.…”

Crowdsourcing as a Tool for Urban Emergency Management: Lessons from the Literature and Typology

“…Emergency management in urban environments is marked by the complexity in the decision-making processes that require a dense set of relationships between multiple stakeholders [1,2]. Among a wide range of possible urban disasters, which can affect millions of people in the closer cities, this paper explores the dam rupture example to elucidate how crowd workers can be leveraged as human sensors and distributed intelligent systems able to work on complex problems.…”