A Multi-purpose Model Driven Platform for Contingency Planning and Shaping Response Measures

Abstract

Effective emergency response requires situational awareness and preplanning for various contingencies inherent to the catastrophe; may it be a natural disaster or man-made crisis situation. Model Driven Software Engineering has contributed to the domain of contingency planning and response in a befitting manner by providing generic and scalable models, simulating emergency scenarios, in order to enhance the skills of responders. However, a thorough literature review identified that a comprehensive, intelligent and repository based model for planning of various contingencies inherent to the emergency situation is a mile stone to be achieved. Accepting the challenge, Interactive Contingency environment creation and Response Planning System (CRIPS) is proposed, which is a model driven platform/framework and facilitates a crisis manager to create a virtual emergency environment with its diverse ingredients and shaping an effective response actions to cater it. A multi perspective feedback mechanism and centrally administered picture board, which are the essential components of any response planning system, have also been incorporated. In addition, intelligent rater and repository concepts are introduced to rate the planning of crisis manager and save this whole contingency environment for analysis and self-learning of model, making it distinctive to the previous researches. The outcome of this research is a comprehensive meta-model, which can be further extended for model based development of an effective contingency and emergency response planning system. The validity of proposed meta-model is demonstrated through a real world case study of terrorists attack on Army Public School (APS) Peshawar/Pakistan. The results prove that proposed model is capable of modeling simple as well as complex scenarios and allows a crisis manager to effectively model a response in order to deter the catastrophic effects.