Integration of multiple technologies in web environment for developing an efficient framework for emergency management

Abstract

Emergency management is a multi-disciplinary endeavor of applying science, technology, planning, and management to deal with extreme events. Effective emergency management demands availability of right data in right format at right time to enable disaster managers for taking efficient decisions at the time of crisis. Technologies and tools including remote sensing, geographical information system (GIS), web services and communication technologies have tremendous potential to support decision making process at the time of emergency. Integration of the available technologies and tool at a common platform for addressing emergency management is a challenge. Different technologies and tools have their own communication protocols and different data standards. To overcome this limitation in integrating all relevant multidisciplinary technologies, a comprehensive framework is proposed with the capabilities of database organization, integration, and decision making tools. This framework is a chain of action for dealing with all phases of emergency management life cycle. It facilitates the necessary components such as preparing for and recovering from a disaster or emergency situation. The integrated system yields as disaster dashboard services, multi-scale geospatial database, decision making tools, set of mobile applications for relief management. To test the capabilities of the framework in real time, it has been translated into a comprehensive emergency information system for National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) as a proof of concept in the form of geo portal. It is an end to end solution fulfilling all the requirements of the NDRF at ground starting from initiating an event to successful completion of the event.