Cloud-Based Intelligence Aquisition and Processing for Crisis Management

Abstract

Contemporary crisis management has to deal with complex socio-technical environments involving many interdependent elements. Many dependencies in such settings result in complex cascading processes that can have adverse effects on the population, environment, and economy. Adequate situation awareness and the capability to predict the development of a crisis situation under different circumstances is a critical element of effective, and timely, crisis management and response. However, this requires rich domain knowledge as complex interdependencies between different socio-technical elements must be understood. Furthermore, substantial domain knowledge is required for (1) determination of what data is relevant in a given situation, (2) the collection of that data, and (3) its analysis; i.e. all the information should be delivered to an expert that can understand that information. Note that domain knowledge is required to “drive” the information requests. Moreover, often multiple experts from different organizations need to be involved, as a single person cannot understand all aspects of the crisis, nor can he/she process all the relevant data. This implies delegation of work in cascaded collaborative systems (distributed awareness), where each expert works on a subset of the problem. The experts must collaborate to supply the decision makers the right information such that they can manage the crisis effectively. To do this effectively all the relevant data must be supplied to the right experts on time and, at the same time, information overload must be avoided. The data is relevant with respect to the task an expert is performing at a given time.