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International audienceThe modern business environment tends to involve a large network of heterogeneous people, devices and organizations that engage in collaborative processes among themselves. Given the nature of this type of collaboration and the high degree of interoperability between partner Information Systems, these processes need to be agile in order to respond to changes in context, which may occur at any time during the collaborative situation.The objective is to build a Mediation Information System (MIS), in support of collaborative situations, whose architecture must be (i) built to be relevant to the collaborative situation under consideration, (ii) more easily integrated into the existing systems, and (iii) sufficiently agile, through its awareness of the environment and of process events, and through the way it reacts to events detected as being relevant.To apply agility mechanisms, it is crucial to detect the significant events that will lead to a subsequent evolution of the situation (detection step). Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) is used to design the structure of the part of the system that is in charge of MIS agility. This architecture takes the events into account, manages them and, if needed, uses them to trigger the adaptation of the MIS.We have defined a means to monitor the evolution of the situation. If relevant changes are detected, and if the situation does not evolve in the expected way, an adaptation is proposed. It is concluded that the principles of detection and adaptation, combined with the responsiveness of the system (provided by the automation of transitions), and based on Event Driven Architecture principles, together provide the agility required for collaborative processes

In a context where enterprises and organizations aim to optimise their behaviour, obtain certifications and labels, and benefit from the smart use of information systems and technology, two considerations drive this research: (1) the weak maturity level of worldwide Business Process Management (BPM), which exposes the need to reconcile academic theories with industrial contexts, and (2) the need for upcoming software functionalities that prioritize removing the barriers frequently encountered by industrialists when trying to implement the method. To reach such goals, this research work has developed a conceptual framework to represent the BPM implementation state. It is built along three axes: the BPM Cycle (Design, Enact, Maintain), the Field (Culture, Business, IT) and the Abstraction Level (Data, Jobs, Behaviour). An organization's overall BPM maturity can thus be evaluated by positioning its capabilities along the framework's axes. It is also suggested that the framework be used to track the implementation of new procedures in an organisation. The framework is presented and detailed before being applied to a complete case study.

To cite this version:Matthieu Lauras, Sébastien Truptil, Frederick Benaben. Towards a better management of complex emergencies through crisis management meta-modelling. Disasters, Wiley, 2015, 39 (4) Finally, an illustrative example concerning a crash between a tanker truck and a train is described.Keywords: crisis management, knowledge-based reasoning, meta-modelling, ontology Introduction and contribution statementsIn a crisis context (such as a natural crisis, crash, conflict, industrial accident), different actors from different organisations (medical units, police, non-governmental organisations) have to work simultaneously and in a hurry. Thus, they need not only to coordinate their objectives and their actions, but also share parts of their resources, information and processes in order to achieve a common goal (according to the people, goods and infrastructures in danger). In this context, the integration of partners is a crucial step to successful crisis reduction. Our aim is to propose a solution to this need of integration of partners by means of knowledge sharing.One main challenge regarding the management of complex emergencies is that it has to adapt to the inevitable changes in the nature of the crisis and remain dedicated to the-possibly changing-group of partners involved in working on the crisis. This raises several issues, such as how to coordinate stakeholders, but above all it requires the definition of a common universe of discourse (in the crisis domain), which is essential to solving the various semantic conflicts that are bound to occur between the participants and their information systems. was to provide partners involved in crisis situations with an information technology interoperability system able to federate their respective heterogeneous and autonomous information systems into a global system of systems acting to reduce the crisis through an adequate collaborative process.In the following pages we first draw up a crisis-ontology state-of-the-art and explore the concepts of ontological engineering. This leads us to propose an original crisis meta-model that extends the limits of previous works and can be used to design and control future response solutions. We then develop an application case to illustrate the dimensions of our proposal and to discuss its advantages and limits.Finally, we present conclusions and discuss opportunities for further research. Background and research scope

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