The assessment of information technology maturity in emergency response organizations

[EN] In emergency response organizations, information technologies are not adequately explored. Sometimes, the mere adoption of new information technologies is not productive, as their efficient use depends on other interrelated technologies and the environment where they are installed. This work describes a model to help organizations understand their capability in respect to the adoption of these technologies. The model also helps the performing of the evaluation from different perspectives, making it suitable to collaborative evaluation. Using the proposed model, an organization can measure its maturity level in different aspects of the evaluation and guide the investment on its capabilities. Part of the model has been developed for emergency response organizations and the information technology dimension of the model has been applied to two fire department installations.Marcos R. S. Borges was partially supported by grants No. 560223/2010-2 and 480461/2009-0 from CNPq (Brazil). Work of José H. Canós is partially funded by the Spanish Ministerio. de Educación y Ciencia (MEC) under grant TIPEX (TIN2010–19859-C03-03). The cooperation between the Brazilian and the Spanish research groups was partially sponsored by the CAPES/MECD Cooperation Program, Project #169/ PHB2007-0064-PC.Santos, RS.; Borges, MRS.; Canos Cerda, JH.; Gomes, JO. (2011). The assessment of information technology maturity in emergency response organizations. Group Decision and Negotiation. 20(5):593-613. doi:10.1007/s10726-011-9232-zS593613205Bigley G, Roberts KH (2001) The incident command system: high reliability organizing for complex and volatile task environments. Acad Manag J 44(6): 1281–1299Chinowsky P, Molenaar K, Realph A (2007) Learning organizations in construction. J Manag Eng 23(1): 27–34Diniz VB, Borges MRS, Gomes JO, Canós JH (2008) Decision making support in emergency response. 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In: Proceedings of the international workshop on groupware, Omaha, Nebraska, USA. Groupware: design, implementation and use. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 5411. Springer, Berlin, pp 135–150Schoenharl T, Szabo G, Madey G, Barabasi AL (2006) WIPER: a multi-agent system for emergency response. In: Proceedings of the 3rd international ISCRAM conference, Newark, New JerseyTuroff M (2002) Past and future emergency response information systems. Commun ACM 45(4): 29–33Turoff M, Chumer M, Hiltz R, Clasher R, Alles M, Vasarhelyi M, Kogan A (2004a) Assuring homeland security: continuous monitoring, control and assurance of emergency preparedness. J Inf Technol Theor Appl (JITTA) 6(3): 1–24Turoff M, Chumer M, Vande Walle B, Yao X (2004b) The design of a dynamic emergency response management information system (DERMIS). J Inf Technol Theor Appl (JITTA) 5(4): 1–35Van der Lee MDE, Van Vugt M (2004) IMI—An information system for effective multidisciplinary incident management. 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The Emergency communication triangle

"This Instructor's Guide is part of a program to train miners in the use of two-way radio communication in the mines. This training tool provides detailed information and scripts for use by instructors when conducting training for miners on every day and emergency radio communication in mining. The training program was created by a multidisciplinary team at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to focus on the need for improved communication in the mines and to train miners to effectively use radios as part of a communications system in a mine. This instructor's guide is intended for use in a group training setting or for individual trainees and should be used in conjunction with the PowerPoint presentation, "Radio 101: every day and emergency radio use" (CD-ROM) and the Radio 101: Student Handbook (publication). With new requirements for communications and tracking systems, as mandated by the MINER Act of 2006, new issues may arise with the use of radios both on a daily basis and in emergencies. For example, if every miner has a handheld radio, there could be a problem with inundation of the airwaves in an emergency, causing a delay in the communication of important information. Also, miners will have more access to handheld radios, so it may be worthwhile to provide all miners with training on how to properly use those radios. In the past, the ineffective use of communications systems within mines in emergency situations has caused a variety of problems. During the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia in January 2006, the improper use of handheld radios resulted in immeasurable pain for the families of the deceased as they were mistakenly informed that there were 12 survivors and 1 dead when, in fact, 12 miners had died and only 1 had survived. This training may be able to prevent a similar situation from occurring in future emergencies. Further, relative to the new systems mines are required to install, miners will need to know how to use both primary and secondary communications systems. Rather than focusing on the technical details and specialized terms of communications systems, the tips provided in this training program will focus on briefer, rule-of-thumb information which can be used to improve the chances of successful communication under less-than-optimal circumstances. New miners may not understand the potential consequences of not answering the phones in an emergency situation. For new miners, these consequences should be stressed in training and include the use of examples. Trainers should explain the meaning and significance of various visual and audible warning systems used in their mine to new miners. They may not understand the significance or consequences of failing to take action in response to these warning systems."- NIOSHTIC-

Evolving issues in Australian emergency management

This article examines some the challenges facing emergency management organizations (EMO's) and policy-makers in Australia. It considers how EMO's will need to be ready to prepare for and, where possible prevent, a range of evolving threats into the future. Such an ability to anticipate capability needs via effective threat assessment and response planning is a needed evolutionary response

NIOSH Emergency Preparedness and Response Program : expert panel review

"The mission of Emergency Preparedness and Response (EPR) Program is to protect the health and safety of emergency response providers and recovery workers through the advancement of research and collaborations to prevent diseases, injuries, and fatalities during responses to natural and man-made disasters and novel emergent events. The EPR Program works to integrate occupational safety and health into emergency responses during planning and preparedness activities, as well as during active emergencies. It is a designated core and specialty program within the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and functions as the coordination point for all NIOSH emergency preparedness and response activities, providing occupational safety and health assistance during emergencies. All Panel members concluded that the EPR Program has done excellent work and made significant progress in improving worker health and safety, both in preparation for and during responses to a wide range of natural and man-made emergencies over the 10 years covered by this evaluation (2007-2017). Given the EPR Program's recent creation, small EPR Office (EPRO) staff, and limited budget, all Panel members were impressed with the EPR Program's impact, productivity, and ability to coordinate expertise from across NIOSH to accomplish this important work in response to a wide range of emergencies ?some anticipated, but many of which unexpected. The Panel found that the EPR Program Evidence Package (Evidence Package) provided significant documentation and information on the health and safety burden for these workers, as well as addressed the need for interventions to a wide range of hazards they face. The Panel also found that the Evidence Package included an impressive number of project outputs and interventions to address specific identified needs and build a solid base of knowledge and experience. These outputs included written publications and webpages, the development of training tools and materials, trainings, technical assistance, sampling methods and guidance, software and mobile apps, and many other tools. The EPR Program strives to remain flexible and responsive to new focus areas and objectives that emerge, as its work is strongly shaped by current events. The EPR Program has shown a significant ability to adapt to the numerous calls for assistance and demands on its resources, often from external agencies and during unexpected emergencies, such as the 2010 Gulf oil spill and the 2014 Ebola outbreak. While the Panel was impressed with this flexibility, they had concerns with how this flexibility might diffuse its limited resources, affecting the Program's focus and impact in the future. Given that responding to current events can be a priority, the Panel also considered the ability of the Program to balance preparedness and response activities. Below are three interconnected key elements believed to be critical to the successful impact of the Program work over the past decade, as identified by the Panel: Focusing activities and outputs from prior work to create a body of knowledge and tools useful for many types of future events. The Panel saw this focus as crucial to strengthening and magnifying the EPR Program impact. Building the capacity of the EPRO, specifically, and NIOSH, generally, to effectively engage and collaborate with the many other federal and state agencies and private organizations, especially those organizations in leadership roles during emergency preparedness and response. The Panel believes that while the Program has had much success gaining visibility and forging collaborations, many organizations still have limited experience with, and knowledge of, the EPR Program and NIOSH. Balancing preparedness and response activities led to the adoption of EPR Program outputs into federal, state, and other emergency plans and the integration of EPRO and other NIOSH staff to leadership positions within emergency response systems. This adoption of outputs and integration of staff has greatly multiplied the impact of EPR work and led to greater and more widespread health and safety protections for emergency response workers. An excellent example of the relevance and impact of this Program, in both preparedness and response, for a wide range of emergencies and disasters, the Panel members agree, is the Emergency Responder Health Monitoring and Surveillance (ERHMS) Program. The ERHMS Program aims to ensure that specific activities to protect the health and safety of emergency response and recovery workers are conducted during each of the three phases of a response-pre-deployment, deployment, and post-deployment. The ERHMS Program has shown its value, first in the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill response and later during the Ebola outbreak. Other key examples of activities conducted by the EPR Program over the past decade, and described in this Review's findings, include: the DWH oil spill response, hurricane responses, radiation responses, anthrax preparedness, and infectious disease responses, including the H1N1 influenza pandemic and the Ebola outbreak. Following their Review of the EPR Program, the Panel makes several recommendations for the future of the Program that they believe will assist in the continuation and expansion of the Program's successes and impact over the next decade." - NIOSHTIC-2NIOSHTIC no. 20057124NIOSH_EPR_Panel_Review_Final_Report-508.pdf2019Contract 200-2017-F-00618667

Developing an Efficient DMCIS with Next-Generation Wireless Networks

The impact of extreme events across the globe is extraordinary which continues to handicap the advancement of the struggling developing societies and threatens most of the industrialized countries in the globe. Various fields of Information and Communication Technology have widely been used for efficient disaster management; but only to a limited extent though, there is a tremendous potential for increasing efficiency and effectiveness in coping with disasters with the utilization of emerging wireless network technologies. Early warning, response to the particular situation and proper recovery are among the main focuses of an efficient disaster management system today. Considering these aspects, in this paper we propose a framework for developing an efficient Disaster Management Communications and Information System (DMCIS) which is basically benefited by the exploitation of the emerging wireless network technologies combined with other networking and data processing technologies.Comment: 6 page

A Secure Lightweight Approach of Node Membership Verification in Dense HDSN

In this paper, we consider a particular type of deployment scenario of a distributed sensor network (DSN), where sensors of different types and categories are densely deployed in the same target area. In this network, the sensors are associated with different groups, based on their functional types and after deployment they collaborate with one another in the same group for doing any assigned task for that particular group. We term this sort of DSN as a heterogeneous distributed sensor network (HDSN). Considering this scenario, we propose a secure membership verification mechanism using one-way accumulator (OWA) which ensures that, before collaborating for a particular task, any pair of nodes in the same deployment group can verify each other-s legitimacy of membership. Our scheme also supports addition and deletion of members (nodes) in a particular group in the HDSN. Our analysis shows that, the proposed scheme could work well in conjunction with other security mechanisms for sensor networks and is very effective to resist any adversary-s attempt to be included in a legitimate group in the network.Comment: 6 page

Ready or Not? Protecting the Public's Health From Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism, 2011

Highlights examples of preparedness programs and capacities at risk of federal budget cuts or elimination, examines state and local public health budget cuts, reviews ten years of progress and shortfalls, and outlines policy issues and recommendations