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Capabilities of C 2 Systems for Crisis Management in Local Communities
Abstract
Development of information systems support for crisis management in local communities must be based on the needs of the crisis management actors as well as capabilities of information technology (IT). IT provides extensive possibilities, but is difficult to adapt to the users' needs. A profound exploration of the needs of systems for crisis management is often neglected. Hence, the management of major crisis has been held back because of the lack of useful tools. This paper presents an architecture for system for the local communities. The development of the architecture was based on a needs analysis, including interviews with crisis management at a local community level. The architecture is also based on novel design issues that have lead to the development of a conceptual model structure called the mission support model whose main concepts mainly include (1) user roles, (2) services and (3) views.
... In disaster management, situation awareness (SA) is critical to all involved agencies and decision makers. In disaster response C2 (Command & Control) system [2], the COP concept is also of great importance. Modern information technology such as Geographic Information System (GIS) and Web-based technologies has been used to support disaster management. ...
People need to understand the kinds of disaster information available from the
multiple participants involved and respond to complex situations in disaster
management. This paper presents a method of constructing common operational
pictures to achieve situation awareness during disaster response among the
emergency response agencies. The method of common operational pictures is
featured with the visualization and collaborative work of current undergoing
response measures and future state prediction provided by computational disaster
models. It was visualized by integrating base map, disaster influence, future state
prediction and resource allocation supported by GIS technologies. The technical
architecture was realized with GIS services and data fusion technologies in a
network centric system.
Keywords: GIS, common operational pictures, disaster response, collaborative
work.
... A DSS is an interactive computer-based system intended to help decision-makers utilize data and models to identify problems and make decisions (Sprague, 1980). C2 systems refer more specifically to information systems designed to support C2 activities both in the military domain and in CM (e.g., Jungert & Hallberg, 2009). Research on DSS has been primarily concerned with the behavioral aspects of managerial work and has often neglected to address the cognitive aspects of decision support (Chen & Lee, 2003). ...
We present an assessment methodology to determine to what extent command and control and crisis management systems effectively support the cognitive processes that lie at the heart of these activities. The approach is focused on cognitive functions that cover the set of processes engaged by command and control and crisis management. We put forward three cognitive functions as being key for achieving optimal cognitive support in these contexts: Situation monitoring, attentional control/management, and planning/coordination of activities. Metrics for the holistic assessment of cognitive support are derived from online measurement using well-established cognitive psychology paradigms directly related to these functions.
In this document, we describe the need for providing a uniform common picture that is missing in several crisis management decision support tools. Through research, we have reviewed some existing crisis management support systems in use and noted key user requirements that these tools are missing. A significant point of this research is to stress the importance of developing a decision support system that would improve the way an ideal support system would collect, analyze and disseminate necessary information to a crisis management decision maker. We also note the importance of ensuring that such a tool presents information to its user over a user friendly interface. The structure thus developed should be a standalone application that could be incorporated into existing platforms (Rinkineva, 2004) such as cell phones, PDAs and laptops.
This paper deals with the paradox of the relatively low integration of Information Technologies and Communication Technologies in the field of emergency management. This fact earns our attention, since difficulties during the management of emergencies and crisis are most often related to these two issues, information management and communication. The analysis of the activity of emergency management shows that this domain is different from other industrial and business activities because of the complexity of situations in terms of uncertainty, number of stakeholders, space and time extension, the potential of damage of any incident if not properly managed, the importance of human and organisational factors and the generalised use of tacit knowledge accumulated with experience. Success of emergency management is of great importance for the safety of local communities. Risk management of a local community is a process which urges interaction between the authorities and other stakeholders, most importantly with citizens. In this respect, ICT can provide useful tools. Yet to benefit from these new tools, we need to gain a proper understanding of real needs for information, of the model of existing information exchange and of ways of communication in the stakeholders' society. As result of the analysis performed, the main roots of the lack of integration of ICT in emergency management have been identified. Most of the problems come from the difficulty in understanding the complexity of EM and in accessing the tacit knowledge of practitioners, which are essential to determine specifications of appropriate ICT systems. A methodology to access the experience of EM practitioners and to formalise this knowledge has been developed. It uses unstructured interviews with stakeholders at different levels of the hierarchy, a formalisation in particles of experience and the validation and sharing of this collective experience. Beyond its objective, this methodology also creates opportunities to develop the culture of risk and the resilience of organisations.
The increased impact of natural disasters and terror attacks on our society has augmented the awareness of needs for advances in emergency response. For local communities it is vital to make use of existing resources. Service- oriented technology provides new possibilities for the enhancement of command and control (C 2 ) systems. However, to gain full use of the technology, it must harmonize with the supported organizations and their work procedures. This paper explores the possibilities and usefulness of service oriented C 2 -systems for emergency response at the local community level. The study was performed in five steps: (1) literature study, (2) interviews, (3) scenario design, (4) prototyping service-oriented C 2 systems, and (5) a scenario based evaluation. The results show that service-oriented C 2 systems would support and enhance emergency response at the local community level. Still, several issues that need to be further considered remain, not the least the ability of quality assurance of services.
People who can effectively lead the implementation of the information technology, commercial and military systems acquisition and development process within the cost and schedule constraints are scarce. These people are becoming known as systems engineers and the approach they use is systems engineering. However, there is no generally accepted definition of systems engineering, nor is there a generally accepted body of knowledge for systems engineering. Mixing ingredients from systems engineering (Beer, Hall, Jackson, Checkland etc.), management (Taylor, Ford, Drucker, Peters, Hammer and Champy etc.), and Quality (Deming, Juran and Crosby etc.), together with some original thoughts, this book takes you on an exploratory journey, and, by documenting the application of systems thinking to the problem of understanding systems engineering, provides you with a unique perspective for understanding systems engineering and management and how they relate to each other.
This paper is a follow up of a field study of two military command teams and reports an experiment that tests three organizations (serial, parallel and optional) of co-operation and situation awareness within commander teams, as well as the communication be-tween the commander team and the operative level. It was found that most groups in the optional condition performed worse than the groups in the other conditions. It was also found that members in the parallel condition differed from members in the serial condi-tion in their situation awareness. The more successful commander team produced more planning in relation to hypotheses, as well as sent less messages in total between the units, than the less successful one.
This Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture is an abstract framework for understanding significant entities and relationships between them within a service-oriented environment, and for the development of consistent standards or specifications supporting that environment. It is based on unifying concepts of SOA and may be used by architects developing specific service oriented architectures or in training and explaining SOA. A reference model is not directly tied to any standards, technologies or other concrete implementation details. It does seek to provide a common semantics that can be used unambiguously across and between different implementations. The relationship between the Reference Model and particular architectures, technologies and other aspects of SOA is illustrated in Figure 1. While service-orientation may be a popular concept found in a broad variety of applications, this reference model focuses on the field of software architecture. The concepts and relationships described may apply to other "service" environments; however, this specification makes no attempt to completely account for use outside of the software domain.
Emergency management system in an organization is intended to make human systems and the built environment more resistant to the impacts of extreme events or large-scale emergencies. Emergency response activities require improvisation, which is a combined cognitive and behavioral activity that must be accomplished serially under time constraint. The environment, required to provide information and communication technology (ICT) based support for improvisation should facilitate emergence operability, which is a structured approach to real-time mixing and matching of diverse ICTs to support individuals and organizations in performing response activities. Work flow models in software engineering can specify a schedule of activities from design of an ICT-based system to support response activities to its implementation. Work flow models that can undertake some phases of technological mixing and matching can be used to support response personnel in emergency response activities.
Introduction to Emergency Management, Fifth Edition, offers a fully up-to-date analysis of US emergency management principles. In addition to expanding coverage of risk management in a time of climate change and terrorism, Haddow, Bullock, and Coppola discuss the impact of new emergency management technologies, social media, and an increasing focus on recovery. They examine the effects of the 2012 election results and discuss FEMA’s controversial National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Introduction to Emergency Management, Fifth Edition, gives instructors and students the best textbook content, instructor-support materials, and online resources to prepare future EM professionals for this demanding career.
Societies have always been challenged by different crises, disasters and difficult times although western society for a long time has been considered safe. In recent years, our perception of the world has changed, due to terrorist attacks and other large-scale disasters. To handle uncertain situations where the conditions can change rapidly; effective crisis management is required. To support crisis management, command and control (C<sup align="right"> 2 </sup>) systems can be used. However, a solid architecture for these systems is needed, if they should meet the requirements of crisis management, e.g., support inter-organisational and situational awareness including crisis, organisational and security awareness. The objective of this paper is to outline an architecture for C<sup align="right"> 2 </sup> systems supporting network centric crisis management. The corner-stones of this architecture are: the C<sup align="right"> 2 </sup> model, the service structure, the service allocation bridges and the distributed ontologies. Further, the information flow and the IT security aspects are covered as well.
Disaster response organizations are ad-hoc assemblies of multiple emergency services that collaborate with the goal to minimize the number of casualties and possible (infra)structural damage. In order to be effective, emergency personnel not only needs shared awareness of the situation but also awareness of the organization. We propose an organization awareness support system that contains a dynamic organigram that provides people with a real-time visualization of the organization that they belong to.
Query languages for multi-sensor data sources are generally dealing with spatial–temporal data that in many applications are of geographical type. Such applications are quite often concerned with dynamic activities where the collected sensor data are streaming in from multiple sensors. Data uncertainty is one of the most important issues, which the query language must deal with. Other aspects of concern are sensor data fusion but also association of multiple object observations. Demonstration of the dynamic aspects are generally difficult as scenarios in real-time cannot easily be set up, tested and run realistically. To overcome this problem the query language sigma query language (ΣQL) has been attached to a simulation framework. Together with this framework scenarios can be set up to form the basis for test and dynamic illustration of the query language. Eventually the query language can be used to support decision making as well. Within the simulation framework input data are coming from sensor models that eventually can be replaced by data from real sensors. Services can be integrated with the information system, used for various purposes and supported by the various capabilities of the query language. A consequence of this approach is that the information delivered by the services, including the query language, can be used as input to an operational picture that eventually can be used to demonstrate on-going dynamic processes. In this work, an extension to ΣQL, called VisualΣQL, will be discussed together with some other relevant services useful in dynamic situations as complements to the query language. Furthermore, the use of the system will be illustrated and discussed by means of a scenario that has been run in the simulation environment.
Crisis management is to a large extent a collaborative activity between different organizations. It is also a complex activity where conditions within the environment, upcoming conditions and incidents must be considered and acted upon, using available and appropriate resources. Efficient crisis management depends on a high degree of situation awareness. Hence, to provide and present adequate information are high priority requirements on crisis management systems. This paper presents a system for rich and user adopted operational pictures, which should be regarded as a component possible to integrate in crisis management systems. The main capability of the proposed system includes an extensive set of views where a view corresponds to a representation of a portion of the operational picture. The view concept makes it possible to dynamically adapt the operational picture to meet the needs of the users. To achieve a high level of adaptability and interoperability the system is based on a service-oriented architecture. The role concept is used to enhance the ability to adapt to the actors and the current situation. Each role has a set of views connected to it. The system is designed to deliver consistent, current and timely situation descriptions. © 2008 by Knowledge Systems Institute Graduate School. All rights reserved.
Through the use of the critical incident technique one may collect specific and significant behavioral facts, providing " a sound basis for making inferences as to requirements " for measures of typical performance (criteria), measures of proficiency (standard samples), training, selection and classification, job design and purification, operating procedures, equipment design, motivation and leadership (attitudes), and counseling and psychotherapy. The development, fundamental principles, present status, and uses of the critical incident technique are discussed, along with a review of studies employing the technique and suggestions for further applications. 74-item bibliography.
Self-Serv aims to enable the declarative composition of new services from existing ones, the multiattribute dynamic selection of services within a composition, and peer-to-peer orchestration of composite service executions. Self-Serv adopts the principle that every service, whether elementary or composite, should provide a programmatic interface based on SOAP and the Web Service Definition Language. This does not exclude the possibility of integrating legacy applications, such as those written in CORBA, into the service's business logic. To integrate such applications, however, first requires the development of appropriate adapters. The paper considers how the mechanism for composing services in Self-Serv is based on two major concepts: the composite service and the service container.
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