Responsibility modelling for civil emergency planning

This paper presents a new approach to analysing and understanding civil emergency planning based on the notion of responsibility modelling combined with HAZOPS-style analysis of information requirements. Our goal is to represent complex contingency plans so that they can be more readily understood, so that inconsistencies can be highlighted and vulnerabilities discovered. In this paper, we outline the framework for contingency planning in the United Kingdom and introduce the notion of responsibility models as a means of representing the key features of contingency plans. Using a case study of a flooding emergency, we illustrate our approach to responsibility modelling and suggest how it adds value to current textual contingency plans

Why Information Matters: A Foundation for Resilience

Embracing Change: The Critical Role of Information, a research project by the Internews' Center for Innovation & Learning, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, combines Internews' longstanding effort to highlight the important role ofinformation with Rockefeller's groundbreaking work on resilience. The project focuses on three major aspects:- Building knowledge around the role of information in empowering communities to understand and adapt to different types of change: slow onset, long-term, and rapid onset / disruptive;- Identifying strategies and techniques for strengthening information ecosystems to support behavioral adaptation to disruptive change; and- Disseminating knowledge and principles to individuals, communities, the private sector, policymakers, and other partners so that they can incorporate healthy information ecosystems as a core element of their social resilience strategies

Decision Making in Emergency Management: The Role of Social Media

Researchers and practitioners alike recognise the importance of emergency management (EM) in limiting the adverse impacts of crisis events, as well as the promise of social media to support these efforts. Decision making, which is crucial to ensure the effective management of immediate, emerging, and sustained crises, is one facet of EM potentially affected by social media. While much research has investigated social media in a crisis context more generally, little is known thus far about what it means for EM decision making. In this paper, we investigate the current knowledge base of this phenomenon and infer from it factors that are crucial for its understanding. To this end, we propose an analytical framework of EM decision making based on previous work on complex problem solving and social media networks. We then systematically review and rethink existing research from a decision-centred point of view to identify and synthesise key findings that are relevant to the role of social media in the EM decision-making process. Finally, we outline the research gaps that need to be closed to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of social media for EM decision support and to begin moving towards theoretically grounded explanations of the phenomenon

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

Assessing vulnerability and modelling assistance: using demographic indicators of vulnerability and agent-based modelling to explore emergency flooding relief response

Flooding is a significant concern for much of the UK and is recognised as a primary threat by most local councils. Those in society most often deemed vulnerable: the elderly, poor or sick, for example, often see their level of vulnerability increase during hazard events. A greater knowledge of the spatial distribution of vulnerability within communities is key to understanding how a population may be impacted by a hazard event. Vulnerability indices are regularly used – in conjunction with needs assessments and on-the-ground research – to target service provision and justify resource allocation. Past work on measuring and mapping vulnerability has been limited by a focus on income-related indicators, a lack of consideration of accessibility, and the reliance on proprietary data. The Open Source Vulnerability Index (OSVI) encompasses an extensive range of vulnerability indicators supported by the wider literature and expert validation and provides data at a sufficiently fine resolution that can identify vulnerable populations. Findings of the OSVI demonstrate the potential cascading impact of a flood hazard as it impacts an already vulnerable population: exacerbating pre-existing vulnerabilities, limiting capabilities and restricting accessibility and access to key services. The OSVI feeds into an agent-based model (ABM) that explores the capacity of the British Red Cross (BRC) to distribute relief during flood emergencies using strategies based upon the OSVI. A participatory modelling approach was utilised whereby the BRC were included in all aspects of the model development. The major contribution of this work is the novel synthesis of demographics analysis, vulnerability mapping and geospatial simulation. The project contributes to the growing understanding of vulnerability and response management within the NGO sector. It is hoped that the index and model produced will allow responder organisations to run simulations of similar emergency events and adjust strategic response plans accordingly

Emerging Informatics

The book on emerging informatics brings together the new concepts and applications that will help define and outline problem solving methods and features in designing business and human systems. It covers international aspects of information systems design in which many relevant technologies are introduced for the welfare of human and business systems. This initiative can be viewed as an emergent area of informatics that helps better conceptualise and design new world-class solutions. The book provides four flexible sections that accommodate total of fourteen chapters. The section specifies learning contexts in emerging fields. Each chapter presents a clear basis through the problem conception and its applicable technological solutions. I hope this will help further exploration of knowledge in the informatics discipline

Library of Coastal Vulnerability Indicators guidance document

The Resilience-Increasing Strategies for Coasts – Toolkit (RISC-KIT) FP7 EU project (2013-2017) aims to produce a set of three innovative and EU-coherent open-source and open-access methods, tools and management approaches (the RISC-KIT) in support of coastal managers, decision-makers and policy makers to reduce risk and increase resilience to low-frequency, high impact hydro-meteorological events. Risk is defined within this project as the product of the probability of a hazard, the exposure of receptors and their vulnerability. Representing the vulnerability and the potential role of DRR in their reduction is crucial for supporting the decision. As such a specific task of the RISC-KIT project (Task 2.2) is dedicated to developing a Library of Vulnerability Indicators to input in the RISC-KIT Toolkit and to test the tools on 11 case studies. The deliverable “Coastal Vulnerability Indicator Library” is composed of a Microsoft Excel database and a guidance document. The deliverable introduces the necessary concepts and methods, provides a review and a collection of existing indicators and proposes methodologies for developing new indicators. The Library has been constructed around four categories: Built Environment, Population, Ecosystem and Systems. The Library also identifies Disaster Reduction Measures influencing vulnerability and proposes methods to include within the assessment of vulnerability