Futuristic Smart Architecture for a Rapid Disaster Response

The ability to control and contain an unexpected disaster event such as a bushfire or flooding in real-time is fraught with logistic and planning challenges. Information is difficult to assimilate both from structured and unstructured data that may be collected in real-time. Unreliability of mostly unstructured data from social media and mobile devices, though extremely helpful, can make it difficult to deploy needed help/assistance in time. Ad hoc planning specifically targeted at saving lives may be severely hampered when part of the infrastructure is destroyed that is normally relied on for data collection. Also when part of the infrastructure is destroyed that normally is relied on for collecting structured data, the situation can even make it harder for ad hoc planning specifically targeted at saving lives first. In such situations, a combination of unstructured data that carries uncertainties and limited structured data from infrastructure that might still be working after/during a disaster event can be used to the best of advantages and still enhance the control process to better achieve desired outcomes: i.e. real-time event monitoring through real-time limited and high uncertainty data; filtering unstructured data through crowd sourcing, not only for reliability but sometimes for language translation as well; short-term predictions of anticipated changes from already existing interoperable simulation models, using the limited structured data from infrastructure that might be still standing following a disaster; and all this with the aim of appropriate, timely responses to saving lives in a rapidly evolving environment. A generic management framework designed to be used during a “phase transition” between pre- and post events, and characterised by the interoperability of distributed simulation models, and the collection and sharing of structured and unstructured data via cloud services and “connected devices”, is essential for the consistent provision of highly effective responses. We explore this framework from a science and innovations perspective, advocating “antifragility” for emergency response system designs. For antifragility systems, failures do not stand for a breakdown or malfunctioning of normal system functions, but rather represent the adaptations necessary to cope with the real world complexity through the management of “robustness trade-offs” as it occurs in dynamic and real-world contexts.