Knowledge-centered design of decision support systems for emergency management

Evaluating Emergency Response Solutions for Sustainable Community Development by Using Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Group Decision Making Approaches: IVDHF-TOPSIS and IVDHF-VIKOR

“…Frequent happening of natural and man-made disaster catastrophic events has brought about huge impact on communities, families and many other societal units, not only suffering from illness or loss of lives but also from negative effects on economic and social conditions in the local area [6]. Lessons from these disasters have compelled governments to evaluate and include emergency response solutions regarding identifiable risks to guarantee sustainable community development.…”

“…to unleash business opportunities in local communities has concurrently also brought about potential risks on environment, human health and safety, and sustainability (EHS/S) [47], which urges local governments to set up decision making procedures for emergency response solutions evalution (ERSE). Figure 1 depicts the basic motivation that ERSE has been recognized as a vital routine activity to serve emergency management in sustainable community planning [6,47,48]. …”

“…to unleash business opportunities in local communities has concurrently also brought about potential risks on environment, human health and safety, and sustainability (EHS/S) [47], which urges local governments to set up decision making procedures for emergency response solutions evalution (ERSE). Figure 1 depicts the basic motivation that ERSE has been recognized as a vital routine activity to serve emergency management in sustainable community planning [6,47,48]. Generally speaking, emergency response solution is a group of procedures to be implemented in case of a catastrophic event situation involving risk analysis, communication, intervention actions, operational support, logistic support, and whatever is necessary to reduce accident impacts [6][7][8]14,49].…”

“…Correspondingly, when community development department (CDD) evaluates alternative emergency response solutions to potential risks of emergency scenarios, decision criteria should be derived from these three stages. Generally speaking, emergency response solution is a group of procedures to be implemented in case of a catastrophic event situation involving risk analysis, communication, intervention actions, operational support, logistic support, and whatever is necessary to reduce accident impacts [6][7][8]14,49]. Following suggestions of practices [50] and the lifecycle theory of emergency management [48,51], effective emergency response solutions should be prepared to cover three stages: pre-event, during-event and after-event.…”

“…The main purpose of these DSS-based approaches is to help emergency managers select among alternative response actions in complex and uncertain situations [6]. Although the emergency management unit in a community development department can maintain a balanced managerial status characterized by a set of qualified response solutions to specific emergency situations so that decision makers can quickly and effectively approve the suggested course of actions in front of an event [6], economic development programs in communities often break that balance which requires emergency response solutions [2,7,8] in community planning to answer risks associated with newly introduced potential threats or disasters. Taking the YiWu International Trading Community in China for example, obviously, trading communication and manufacturing collaboration with developing or undeveloped countries have substantially contributed to local fast economic growth.…”