Situational Awareness Technologies for Disaster Response

Responding to natural or man-made disasters, in a timely and effective manner, can reduce deaths and injuries, contain or prevent secondary disasters, and reduce the resulting economic losses and social disruption. During a crisis, responding organizations confront grave uncertainties in making critical decisions. They need to gather situational information (e.g., state of the civil, transportation and information infrastructures), together with information about available resources (e.g., medical facilities, rescue and law enforcement units). There is a strong correlation between the accuracy, timeliness, and reliability of the information available to the decision-makers, and the quality of their decisions. Dramatic improvements in the speed and accuracy at which information about the crisis flows through the disaster response networks has the potential to revolutionize crisis response, saving human lives and property. This chapter highlights some of the key information technology challenges being addressed in the Project RESCUE1 [1], with a particular focus