A data model for operational and situational information in emergency response
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ORIGINAL PAPER
A data model for operational and situational information in emergency response The Dutch case Arta Dilo · Sisi Zlatanova
Received: 29 April 2010 / Accepted: 8 July 2011 / Published online: 3 August 2011 © The Author(s) 2011. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Many software systems have been created to help the emergency responders in their activities all over the world. These systems are usually dedicated to a specific emergency situation or emergency response sector. Exchange of information between the different systems is difficult or not possible. While much progress is observed in accessing and sharing existing data, management of field (or dynamic) data is often overlooked. A lot of information coming from the field operations is either not archived or is stored in an unstructured way. This makes the analysis of data a difficult and slow process. This paper presents a data model for the management of dynamic data. The data model captures the situational information—incident and its effect— and the operational information—-processes activated, people and departments involved. New data types are created for temporal and spatiotemporal information: dynamic counts, e.g. the number of injured or missing people, moving point and moving region, e.g. the position of vehicles or people and the gas plume. The model is derived from the emergency response procedure in the Netherlands. The information needs resulting from this procedure are, in a large part, valid for emergency situations everywhere, therefore the model can be easily adapted for other countries.
A. Dilo (B) Pervasive Systems, EWI, Twente University, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] S. Zlatanova GIS Technology, OTB, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5030, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Database schemas · Spatiotemporal data · Disaster management · GIS · Hazards · Urban areas
Introduction The first hours after a disaster strikes are not only very chaotic and difficult but also the most important for successfully fighting the consequences, saving human lives and reducing damages in public and private properties (Diehl and van der 2005; Rao et al. 2007; Zlatanova and Fabbri 2009). Usually several primary organisations are involved in the first-response operations such as the fire brigade, paramedics, police and municipality. Depending on the scale of the disaster, other organisations, e.g. civil protection centres, defence units or Red Cross, might be involved as well. All these organisations rely on well-defined policies and procedures, as well as on the most complete and upto-date information about an incident. A multitude of systems are developed to facilitate the operations during an emergency response. These systems are created for specific types of disasters (Benjamin 2009; Chen et al. 2008; Skhal 2006) or as solutions to different problems in emergency response by use of a specific technology (Bahrepour et al. 2
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