A Maturity Model for IT Dependability in Emergency Management

In many organisations a gap exists between IT management and emergency managemement. This paper illustrates how process improvement based on a maturity model can be used to help organisations to evaluate and improve the way they include IT dependability information in their emergency management. This paper presents the IDEM3 (IT Dependability in Emergency Management Maturity Model) process improvement framework which focuses especially on the cooperation between IT personnel, emergency managers, and users, to proactively prevent IT dependability problems when the IT systems are most critical in emergency situations. This paper describes the details of the framework, how the framework was developed and its relation to other maturity models in related fields

A Maturity Model for IT Dependability in Emergency Management

In many organisations a gap exists between IT management and emergency managemement. This paper illustrates how process improvement based on a maturity model can be used to help organisations to evaluate and improve the way they include IT dependability information in their emergency management. This paper presents the IDEM3 (IT Dependability in Emergency Management Maturity Model) process improvement framework which focuses especially on the cooperation between IT personnel, emergency managers, and users, to proactively prevent IT dependability problems when the IT systems are most critical in emergency situations. This paper describes the details of the framework, how the framework was developed and its relation to other maturity models in related fields

Dependability of IT Systems in Emergency Situations – Theory and Practice

As our dependence on IT systems increases, evaluating the dependability of critical IT systems becomes more important. One of the main challenges in software reliability engineering is the sensitivity of software systems to a changing usage. This is especially important for systems that are critical in the aftermath of a crisis and for which reliability is the most important aspect of dependability. The crisis might change the usage of the system, and this could have a negative effect on the reliability. Because crisis situations are typically rare events, both the reliability and the criticality of IT systems after a crisis situation are hard to predict. The first part of this thesis focuses on the analysis of the sensitivity of the reliability of IT systems to changes in their usage. With the help of statistical methods the effects of changing usage profiles, modelled through the use of Markov models, can be examined. After a theoretical derivation of the properties of different models for the usage of software systems, the results were validated by applying the models to the data collected from the logfiles of a webserver. Swedish municipalities also depend more and more on IT systems for their daily work. Because of their important role in the relief coordination after a crisis, the dependability of their IT systems during these emergency situations is especially critical. The evaluation of this dependability requires the combination of two kinds of information: how critically needed the IT systems are in the aftermath of a crisis and how trustworthy the critical systems are. To avoid that a failing IT system disturbs the relief work, risk and vulnerability analyses need to take into account the dependability of critical IT systems. This way, municipalities can make sure that the relief work is not critically dependent on systems that are not sufficiently reliable. The second part of this thesis describes a case study on how two Swedish municipalities deal with these issues. The study focuses especially on the division of responsibilities in the municipalities and on their current methods. The study shows that today there is much room for improvement, especially in the communication between IT personnel and emergency managers. The main goal of these case studies is to form a basis for the development of practical methods that can assist Swedish municipalities in evaluating the dependability of their IT systems and integration of this information in their emergency planning in the near future

The Effects of Computer Crimes on the Management of Disaster Recovery

The effects of a technology disaster on an organization can include a prolonged disruption, loss of reputation, monetary damages, and the inability to remain in business. Although much is known about disaster recovery and business continuance, not much research has been produced on how businesses can leverage other technology frameworks to assist information technology disaster recovery. The problem was the lack of organizational knowledge to recover from computer crime interruptions given the maturity level of existing disaster recovery programs. The purpose of this Delphi study was to understand how disaster recovery controls and processes can be modified to improve response to a computer crime caused business interruption. The overarching research question in this study was to understand what factors emerge relative to the ability of disaster recovery programs to respond to disasters caused by computer crimes. The conceptual framework included a maturity model to look at how programs might be improved to respond to the computer crimes threat. Research data were collected from a 3 round Delphi study of 22 disaster recovery experts in the fields of disaster recovery and information security. Results from the Delphi encompass a consensus by the panel. Key findings included the need for planning for cyber security, aligning disaster recovery with cyber security, providing cyber security training for managers and staff, and applying lessons learned from experience. Implications for positive social change include the ability for organizations to return to an acceptable level of operation and continue their service benefiting employees, customers, and other stakeholders

Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS - a collection of Technical Notes Part 2

This report provides an introduction and overview of the Technical Topic Notes (TTNs) produced in the Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS (Tigars) project. These notes aim to support the development and evaluation of autonomous vehicles. Part 1 addresses: Assurance-overview and issues, Resilience and Safety Requirements, Open Systems Perspective and Formal Verification and Static Analysis of ML Systems. This report is Part 2 and discusses: Simulation and Dynamic Testing, Defence in Depth and Diversity, Security-Informed Safety Analysis, Standards and Guidelines

Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS - a collection of Technical Notes Part 1

This report provides an introduction and overview of the Technical Topic Notes (TTNs) produced in the Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS (Tigars) project. These notes aim to support the development and evaluation of autonomous vehicles. Part 1 addresses: Assurance-overview and issues, Resilience and Safety Requirements, Open Systems Perspective and Formal Verification and Static Analysis of ML Systems. Part 2: Simulation and Dynamic Testing, Defence in Depth and Diversity, Security-Informed Safety Analysis, Standards and Guidelines

Adapting IT Governance Frameworks using Domain Specific Requirements Methods: Examples from Small & Medium Enterprises and Emergency Management

IT Governance methods and frameworks have been applied in most large for-profit organizations since these enterprisesrealize the benefits of IT Governance for their business. However, former research and our own surveys show thatframeworks such as ITIL and COBIT are not very well established in Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) as well as inEmergency Management (EM) organizations. Thus, we investigated what kind of barriers can be the cause for the lowadoption rate. These results built the basis for our Domain Specific Engineering (DSE) approach. The research is based onthe data of two research projects. The first project investigated the utilization of ITSM methods in European SMEs, and thesecond has researched different emergency management organizations. This paper defines similarities and differences of thetwo domain specific solutions, describes the engineering approach, and gives guidelines for further research in otherdomains

Maintenance Strategy Choice Supported by the Failure Rate Function: Application in a Serial Manufacturing Line

The purpose of this article is to choose a maintenance procedure for the critical equipment of a forging production line with five machines. The research method is quantitative modelling and simulation. The main research technique includes retrieving time between failure and time to repair data and find the most likely distribution that has produced the data. The most likely failure rate function helps to define the maintenance strategy. The study includes two kinds of maintenance policies, reactive and anticipatory. Reactive policies include emergency and corrective procedures. Anticipatory policies include predictive and preventive ones combined with a total productive maintenance management approach. The most suitable combination for the first three machines is emergency and corrective choice. For the other machines, a combination of total productive maintenance and a predictive approach is optimal. The study encompasses the case of a serial production manufacturing line and maximum likelihood estimation. The failure rate function defines a combination of strategies for each machine. In addition, the study calculates the individual and systemic mean time to failure, mean time to repair, availability, and the most likely number of failures per production order, which follows a Poisson process. The main contribution of the article is a structured method to help define maintenance choices for critical equipment based on empirical data

The future of UAS: standards, regulations, and operational experiences [workshop report]

This paper presents the outcomes of "The Future of UAS: Standards, Regulations and Operational Experiences" workshop, held on the 7th and 8th of December, 2006 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The goal of the workshop was to identify recent international activities in the Unmanned Airborne Systems (UAS) airspace integration problem. The workshop attracted a broad cross-section of the UAS community, including: airspace and safety regulators, developers, operators and researchers. The three themes of discussion were: progress in the development of standards and regulations, lessons learnt from recent operations, and advances in new technologies. This paper summarises the activities of the workshop and explores the important outcomes and trends as perceived by the authors

Adaptive architectures for future highly dependable, real time systems

Many present-day safety-critical or mission-critical military applications are deployed using intrinsically static architectures. Often these applications are real-time systems, where late responses may cause potentially catastrophic results. Static architectures allow system developers to certify with a high degree of confidence that their systems will provide correct functionality during operation, but a more adaptive approach could provide some clear benefits. In particular, the ability to dynamically reconfigure the system at run time would give increased flexibility and performance in response to unpredictable or unplanned operating scenarios. Many current dynamic architectural approaches provide little or no features to facilitate the highly dependable, real-time performance required by critical systems. The challenge is to provide the features and benefits of dynamic architectural approaches while still achieving the required level of performance and dependability. This paper describes the early results of an ongoing research programme, part funded by the Software Systems Engineering Initiative (SSEI), aimed at developing a more adaptive software architecture for future military systems. A range of architectures with adaptive features (including object-based, agent based and publish/subscribe) are reviewed against the desirable characteristics of highly dependable systems. A publish/subscribe architecture is proposed as a potential way forward and a discussion of its advantages and disadvantages for highly dependable, real-time systems is given