Telematic Requirements for Emergency and Disaster Response Derived from Enterprise Models

Abstract

One of the prime objectives in disaster response management is to achieve full control of the situation as rapidly as possible. Coordination and communication facility therefore plays an essential role in managing disasters. This chapter discusses Enterprise Models that capture the invariant structures of medical emergency and disaster response management using notions like tasks, roles and agents. On one hand, these notions are generic enabling the model to cope with a broad range of events, from complex, dynamic and multifaceted disasters to more routine medical emergency cases. On the other hand, refinements of the models to specialized cases reveal the coordination and communication needs which are aligned with the context (i.e. the task objectives). This paves the way for dynamic selections of computing and network resource alternatives, possibly scarcely available on the scene, that match with the coordination and communication needs, for instance, hand-offs to a better communication alternative, possibly using a different wireless technology. The Enterprise models, which separate roles responsible for the tasks from the agents assigned to those roles, have the advantage that roles can be virtually moved to the scene of the disaster without the need to transport all agents to the scene. This latter is a simple form of an augmented reality environment, which brings on-site reality at the scene of the disaster into the scope of command and control of off-site teams or team members. A mobile telematic system is needed to bridge the coordination and communication spatial gap between roles or agents; its requirements however can be derived from the Enterprise models.