A System for Collaboration and Information Sharing in Disaster Management

Natural and man-made hazards are complex situations involving multiple organizations that need to collaborate. Communication and information exchange are critical for responding to these situations, while at the same time organizations can locally and internationally benefit from expertise, knowledge, and information exchange also outside of an ongoing response for preparation. In order to improve the capabilities of these involved organizations, a communication system is designed based on a content-oriented federated architecture tailored to disaster management. It includes a catalogue that is offering web services for publishing, subscribing, and discovery of disaster information and further services for collaboration of agencies and first responders. The main requirement is access control as responders deal with sensitive data. The system has been designed and successfully evaluated together with end users from several disciplines involved in disaster management.