Augmented Reality in Support of Disaster Response

Abstract

Disaster Management is a complex process, usually dealing with a large amount of uncertain, incomplete and vague information, which normally requires the coordination and collaboration among a variety of actors. THEMIS (disTributed Holistic Emergency Management Intelligent System) is designed as an intelligent system aimed at supporting real time disaster management activities of decision-makers in command posts, and responders in the field. It gathers information from multiple sources (e.g., users, sensors, crowdsourcing), and provides situational awareness based on a georeferenced common picture which is shared among system users This paper presents the preliminary work developed in the context of the THEMIS project addressing the use of Augmented Reality by first responders in a context of disasters relief operations.