A Semantics-Based Common Operational Command System for Multiagency Disaster Response

Abstract

Disaster response is a highly collaborative and critical process that requires the involvement of multiple government agencies and emergency responders (ERs) ideally working together under a unified command to enable a rapid and effective operational response. Following the 9/11 and 11/13 terrorist attacks, and the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it is apparent that inadequate communication and a lack of interoperability among the ERs engaged on-site can adversely affect disaster response efforts. Within this context, we present a scenario-based terrorism case study to highlight the challenges of operational disaster command and response. In this work, which is based on the French emergency response doctrine, we introduce a semantics-based common operational command system that is designed to guarantee an efficient information flow among ERs. In particular, our focus is on offering to all ERs a real-time operational picture of the situation in order to enable multi-level coordination among firefighters, police, gendarmerie, healthcare units, public authorities, and other stakeholders. Our approach consolidates information in order to promote timely sharing among ERs. The proposed system is based on an ontology that has been developed to represent the different types of knowledge on the part of ERs, providing a shared vocabulary that covers a variety of interoperability concerns arising for example because data are collected in different formats, because the different functions of different stakeholders are not taken into account, and because there are failures of coordination among different groups of emergency responders.

Comparison of disaster information from various media in strengthening ecological communication during & after natural disasters

“…Where residents actively communicate to help their families, friends, and neighbors in overcoming each phase of a disaster, it is likely that each individual will feel something bigger than the natural disaster that befell him [ 25 , 26 ]. In addition, individuals who feel part of a community can build stronger disaster ecology communication to help themselves, their families, and neighbors in overcoming the difficulties that occur as a result of the disaster [ 27 , 28 ].…”

Uma Plataforma para promover a Interoperabilidade entre Órgãos de Segurança Pública

“…Dentre eles, o trabalho proposto por [Cinque et al 2016] cita que middlewares são comumente utilizados para integrac ¸ão entre agências de seguranc ¸a com informac ¸ões heterogêneas, mas traz outras perspectivas a respeito da confiabilidade e da integralidade do sistema, com necessidade de requisitos como redundância e tolerância a falhas. Em [Elmhadhbi et al 2020] é proposta uma soluc ¸ão para possibilitar o compartilhamento de informac ¸ões de forma confiável e em tempo real entre os agentes de seguranc ¸a e saúde pública, buscando a traduc ¸ão dos símbolos e vocabulário que cada sistema está familiarizado. A soluc ¸ão proposta em [Cinque et al 2017] tem o mesmo objetivo de compartilhar as informac ¸ões entre agências de combate a desastres, sem a necessidade de um módulo central mas de nós distribuídos.…”

Ontology-Driven Multicriteria Decision Support for Victim Evacuation

“…Thus we refer where necessary to existing biomedical ontologies within the OBO Foundry (Smith et al, 2007), which were chosen for their quality, considerable usage, use of common design principles, and compliance with BFO. Figures (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13) illustrate partial views of the proposed module. In each figure, reused classes are marked with a prefix that marks the source ontology.…”

“…PROOVES has been developed within the scope of the existing POLARISC project (for: Plateforme OpérationnelLe d'Actualisation du Renseignement Interservices pour la Sécurité Civile) (Elmhadhbi et al, 2018). As shown in Figure 1, the POLARISC platform is composed of three layers (Elmhadhbi et al, 2020): a user interface layer that offers a real-time operational picture by respecting the graphical charter and color code of each stakeholder, POLARISC mediator that plays the role of gateway between end-user and the core system to provide a suitable representation of the requested information according to ERs' specificities, and the core system that is composed of a knowledge base based on a suite of ontologies elaborated by referring to domain experts and a set of integrated services (PROOVES, etc.) and geospatial resources bases.…”