Toward a Taxonomy for Classifying Crisis Information Management Systems

Abstract

In this chapter, we describe the process and the preliminary results of developing a taxonomy of Crisis Information Management Systems (CIMS). Building the taxonomy, we aim at orienting the understanding of the area (main topics, interrelations, challenges, gaps, etc.) and guide the search of the literature and systems focused on the topic of interest. Following the iterative method proposed by Nickerson et al. in 2013, we focused on the emergency response stage of the emergency management life cycle and defined a taxonomy organized along seven dimensions, namely, coordination, collaboration, information management, visualization, communication, intelligence, and global support; for each dimension, a number of characteristics understood as features of CIMS have been identified. The first version of the Tax-CIM taxonomy has been applied to the analysis of 15 CIMS, showing that some changes had to be made and led to a second and more robust version.