Community-based collaborative information system for emergency management

  • Authors:

  • Juan Li;Qingrui Li;Chao Liu;Samee Ullah Khan;Nasir Ghani

  • Affiliations:

  • North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108, USA;North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108, USA;North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108, USA;North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108, USA;University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA

  • Venue:
  • Computers and Operations Research
  • Year:
  • 2014

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Abstract

Natural and man-made disasters, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, and epidemics pose a significant threat to human societies. To respond to emergencies in a fast and an effective manner, Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is very important for the decision-making process. The provision of information concerning the ''ground-zero'' situation to the emergency management stakeholders is an essential prerequisite for MCDM. In this paper, we propose a strategy to form a community-based virtual database, which connects local resource databases of suppliers that provide information and human resources for emergency management. Such a virtual database enables collaborative information sharing among community-based NGOs, public, and private organizations within a community. Moreover, to mobilize resources, the aforementioned process raises awareness within the community and aids in assessing local knowledge and resources. In our work, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of such a community-based database, which maximally utilizes all of the available information and network resources of a community to better manage natural and man-made disasters.