Emergency Response Systems:
Past, Present, and Future
Murray Turoff
Information Systems Department
College of Computing Sciences
New Jersey Institute of Technology
http://is.njit.edu/turoff
turoff@njit.edu
http://is.njit.edu
(C) Murray Turoff 2003
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Emergency Response Systems
Planned Topics
Nature of an Emergency
OEP lore and experience
Conceptual Design of DERMIS:
 Dynamic Emergency Response
Management Information Systems
(DERMIS)
First Layer of defense for the “Public
Body”
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Emergency Management
Characteristics
 Unpredictable:
Events
Who will be involved
What information will be needed
What resources will be needed
What actions will be taken, when,
where, and by who
 No time for training, meeting, or
planning
 No contingency plan that fits
perfectly
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Emergency Management
Requirements
 Obtain data, status, views
 Monitor conditions
 Obtain expertise, liaison, action
takers, reporters
 Draft contingencies
 Validate options
 Obtain approvals, delegate authority
 Coordinate actions, take actions,
evaluate actions
 Evaluate outcomes
Modify scenarios and plans
Modify community and operations
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Organizational Emergency
Situations
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Strike
Court Case
Cost overrun
Delivery delay
New regulation
Terrorist action
Supply shortage
Natural Disaster
Production delay
Product malfunction
Contract Negotiation
Loss of a key employee
Loss of a key customer
Responding to an RFP
New Competitive product
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Office of Emergency
Preparedness (OEP)
 Existed until 1973 in the Executive Offices
 Derivative of OSS (Office of Special Services)
 Centralized civilian command and control in any
crisis situation:
 natural disasters, national strikes, commodity
shortages, wartime situations, industry
priorities, wage price freeze
 Command resources of all federal, state, local and
industrial sources
 Could incorporate personal as needed from any
source
 Did contingency planning and utilized large
community of experts and professionals on a
national bases
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OEP Wisdom I
 An emergency system must be
regularity used to work in a real
emergency
 People are working intense 14-18
hour days and cannot be interrupted
 Timely tacking of what is happening
is critical
 Delegation of authority a must and
 Providing related data and
information up, down, and laterally
is critical
 Plans are in constant modification
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OEP Wisdom II
Roles are the constant in an
emergency and who is in a role
may vary unexpectedly
Training people in multiple
roles is very desirable
Roles and their privileges must
be defined in the response
system
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OEP Wisdom III
 Supporting confidence in a decision
by the best possible timely
information
 Necessary Properties
Free exchange of information
Delegation of authority
Decision accountability
Decision oversight
Information source identification
Information overload reduction
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Recent Supporting Wisdom
“. . . the key obstacle to
effective crisis response is the
communication needed to
access relevant data or
expertise and to piece together
an accurate understandable
picture of reality” – Hale 1997
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Other Supporting Wisdom
Coordination by feedback
viewed as failure of planning
and failure of coordination by
most organizations. Instead
plan should focus on improving
and facilitating feedback –
Dynes & Quarenteli 1977.
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Six Specific Interaction Design
Criteria
Metaphors understood by
professionals
Human roles built in
Others in paper
Notifications integrated into
communications
Context visibility
Semantic Hypertext relationships
List processing at user level
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Metaphors I
Log of an Event
Root Event and Sub-events
Lateral Events
Each event triggered by
specified role or roles
Event Template
A collection of events possible
within the context of a given root
event
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Metaphors II
Events delivered to specified
reactive roles for the event
Events delivered to roles that
have specified the need to
track given parent events
Event status is maintained
Events can be categorized
and/or marked by user
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Metaphors III
Events have semantic links to
all relevant information and
data
Forms for the collection of data
Resources of concern
Maps and Pictures
Appropriate command choices
Appropriate status options
Parent, children, and Lateral
events
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Example: Resource Request
Event Template
 Resource Request (location,
situation)
Allocation (or deny, delay, partial
allocation)
In transit
Arrival of resource
Status change in resource
Status change in situation
Recycle event
Resource maintenance, reassignment
Return transit
Tailored event
Completion event
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Roles in DERMIS
Characterized by
Events the role can trigger
Required reactions to events
Responsibilities for
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Actions, Decisions
Reporting of data
Assessing Information
Oversight, assessment
Resource maintenance
Reporting, Liaison
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Fundamental Roles
 Resource Requests
 Resource Allocation
 Resource Maintenance
 Resource Acquisition
 Reporting and updating situations
 Analysis of Situations
 Oversight, consulting, advising
 Alerting
 Assigning Roles
 Coordination among different areas
 Priority and Strategy Setting
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Training with DERMIS
 Easy to establish training exercises
based upon role-event structure
 Simulation driven by a sequence of timed
events in real time tied to the clock or
can be speeded up for some types of
training
 Players can easily be simulated with
respect to actions and generated events
 Small teams can participate with a much
larger groups of simulated players
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Evaluating with DERMIS
Examine log file of events and
actions by roles
Develop appropriate analysis
tools to aid this process
Discover and correct problems
by improving system and/or
improving training
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Recovery with DERMIS
Can be used to direct and
coordinate the recovery
activity
Can involve any diversity
organizations and agencies
involved
Provides a complete record and
accountability for the recovery
process
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Auxiliary Supporting Systems
Resource Databases
Organizational Memory &
Collaborative Knowledge
Systems
Virtual Communities
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The Future
 Smart planning, talented people, and well
designed adaptive communication /
information networks are needed
 Change and disruption is more common
than we think, even in commerce, and
getting more frequent
 The technology exists to do what OEP
used to be able to do and improve on
those systems using modern technology
 However, does the organizational
motivation and understanding exist to do
it?
 The issue is designing new virtual organizations
and communities that will change existing
organizations and the way things are done.
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Full and future papers
The Design of Emergency Response
Management Information Systems
Via http://is.njit.edu/turoff
Future Meetings for papers on this topic
AMCIS 2004 and ISCRAM 2004
http://howe.stevens.edu/AMCIS2004
http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/ISCRAM2004
Future journal issue
http://jitta.org
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