Collaborative technology: providing agility in response to extreme events

The past two years have shown both the power of nature and the complexity of preparing for and responding to extreme events. Response efforts have demonstrated serious management, coordination, and problem solving issues. This paper provides an overview of the US Federal Government's current approach to emergency management. It discusses some of the pitfalls with this approach and proposes using collaborative technology to assist in providing agility in response to extreme events. It concludes with the outline of a research project that will provide the opportunity to evaluate the use of collaborative technologies in disaster response and mitigation.