Knowledge acquisition and dissemination for emergency situation

Emergency situation is highly uncertain, dynamic, time pressure in making decisions and involves multi organizations and multi jurisdiction level. This paper presents a conceptual architecture that can be used by emergency response task force in assisting the victims of the disaster. Flood disaster is used as a case study. The architecture describes the knowledge and communication for flood emergency response management

empathi: An ontology for Emergency Managing and Planning about Hazard Crisis

In the domain of emergency management during hazard crises, having sufficient situational awareness information is critical. It requires capturing and integrating information from sources such as satellite images, local sensors and social media content generated by local people. A bold obstacle to capturing, representing and integrating such heterogeneous and diverse information is lack of a proper ontology which properly conceptualizes this domain, aggregates and unifies datasets. Thus, in this paper, we introduce empathi ontology which conceptualizes the core concepts concerning with the domain of emergency managing and planning of hazard crises. Although empathi has a coarse-grained view, it considers the necessary concepts and relations being essential in this domain. This ontology is available at https://w3id.org/empathi/

Estimating Fire Weather Indices via Semantic Reasoning over Wireless Sensor Network Data Streams

Wildfires are frequent, devastating events in Australia that regularly cause significant loss of life and widespread property damage. Fire weather indices are a widely-adopted method for measuring fire danger and they play a significant role in issuing bushfire warnings and in anticipating demand for bushfire management resources. Existing systems that calculate fire weather indices are limited due to low spatial and temporal resolution. Localized wireless sensor networks, on the other hand, gather continuous sensor data measuring variables such as air temperature, relative humidity, rainfall and wind speed at high resolutions. However, using wireless sensor networks to estimate fire weather indices is a challenge due to data quality issues, lack of standard data formats and lack of agreement on thresholds and methods for calculating fire weather indices. Within the scope of this paper, we propose a standardized approach to calculating Fire Weather Indices (a.k.a. fire danger ratings) and overcome a number of the challenges by applying Semantic Web Technologies to the processing of data streams from a wireless sensor network deployed in the Springbrook region of South East Queensland. This paper describes the underlying ontologies, the semantic reasoning and the Semantic Fire Weather Index (SFWI) system that we have developed to enable domain experts to specify and adapt rules for calculating Fire Weather Indices. We also describe the Web-based mapping interface that we have developed, that enables users to improve their understanding of how fire weather indices vary over time within a particular region.Finally, we discuss our evaluation results that indicate that the proposed system outperforms state-of-the-art techniques in terms of accuracy, precision and query performance.Comment: 20pages, 12 figure

Evaluation of the System of Disaster Management Resulting from War Operations and Terrorism in Iraq

Nowadays the science of disaster and crisis management is considered as one of the important sciences all over the world. Therefore, disaster management is considered an important and common subject that requires great efforts. So continuous research is one of the important ways to establish the best methods to evaluate and develop the management of disasters and crises. Such methods are appropriate to deal with the suffering that many countries experience from natural and environmental disasters from time to time. This research aims to show the significance of disaster and crisis management in general. It also explores the current situation related to disaster response management in Iraq. This exploration focuses on the achievement of the basic functions of the management operation (planning, organizing, directing, controlling). In addition, it identifies the weaknesses and the strengths of the current administrative system in all its elements and analyses all the problems and the defects in every element, in order to treat and solve these problems and defects by making recommendations to improve the immediate response system to serve Iraqi disaster management in the future. In order to satisfy this aim, data collection included information obtained from literatures relating to disaster and crisis management. In addition, other information was obtained from a field survey of the directories of the civil defence in Iraq. Furthermore, collective and personal interviews with specialists related to disasters and crisis resulting from the war operations and terrorism were conducted. Analysis of the data results revealed many weak points in the current system and this was confirmed by the field survey. It showed us more clearly the areas where the weak points appear in the management function, especially in the planning and organization functions. One of the most important weak points is the absence of heavy equipment, as well as the shortage of specialist engineering staff and a dependence on assistance from other service departments. This is because of the local roles and the departmental management in the government. Finally, the study reached a set of conclusions and recommendations, including providing the directories of the civil defence with the heavy rescue equipment and providing specialist trained engineering staff to deal with the disasters and crises. Moreover, it sets in place an incentive scheme for the related members of the directories of the civil defence. Such schemes encourage them to continue working to face the unnatural circumstances that Iraq is experiencing and to create an environment similar to that of developed countries in the world. This contributes to overcoming the disasters of all shapes and reduces the damage to lives and property

Adaptive service discovery on service-oriented and spontaneous sensor systems

Service-oriented architecture, Spontaneous networks, Self-organisation, Self-configuration, Sensor systems, Social patternsNatural and man-made disasters can significantly impact both people and environments. Enhanced effect can be achieved through dynamic networking of people, systems and procedures and seamless integration of them to fulfil mission objectives with service-oriented sensor systems. However, the benefits of integration of services will not be realised unless we have a dependable method to discover all required services in dynamic environments. In this paper, we propose an Adaptive and Efficient Peer-to-peer Search (AEPS) approach for dependable service integration on service-oriented architecture based on a number of social behaviour patterns. In the AEPS network, the networked nodes can autonomously support and co-operate with each other in a peer-to-peer (P2P) manner to quickly discover and self-configure any services available on the disaster area and deliver a real-time capability by self-organising themselves in spontaneous groups to provide higher flexibility and adaptability for disaster monitoring and relief

Data Interpretation Support in Rescue Operations: Application for French Firefighters

International audienceThis work aims at developing a system that supports French firefighters in data interpretation during rescue operations. An application ontology is proposed based on existing crisis management ones and operational expertise collection. After that, a knowledge-based system will be developed and integrated in firefighters' environment. Our first studies are shown in this paper

Situation Representation and Awareness for Rescue Operations

International audienceDuring rescue operations, being aware of the situation is very critical for rescuers and decision-makers to reduce the impacts. This work aims to support situation awareness amongst actors participating in rescue operations by adopting an ontology-based approach. An application ontology is proposed based on existing related ontologies and operational expertise collection. It will help to ensure common situation representation and understanding between different actors. After that, a knowledge-based system will be developed and integrated in actors' environment to support decision-making. Our preliminary results are shown in this paper

Linked Data for the Natural Sciences. Two Use Cases in Chemistry and Biology

Wiljes C, Cimiano P. Linked Data for the Natural Sciences. Two Use Cases in Chemistry and Biology. In: Proceedings of the Workshop on the Semantic Publishing (SePublica 2012). 2012: 48-59.The Web was designed to improve the way people work together. The Semantic Web extends the Web with a layer of Linked Data that offers new paths for scientific publishing and co-operation. Experimental raw data, released as Linked Data, could be discovered automatically, fostering its reuse and validation by scientists in different contexts and across the boundaries of disciplines. However, the technological barrier for scientists who want to publish and share their research data as Linked Data remains rather high. We present two real-life use cases in the fields of chemistry and biology and outline a general methodology for transforming research data into Linked Data. A key element of our methodology is the role of a scientific data curator, who is proficient in Linked Data technologies and works in close co-operation with the scientist