ملاحظات طراحی شده برای یک مرکز اطلاعات مجازی برای کمک های بشردوستانه / امداد رسانی به فاجعه با استفاده از مدل سازی جریان کار

There are innumerable human and organizational circumstances when free flowing information is essential for effective decision-making. In a closed system with limited boundary scanning, information handling is a fairly manageable task [School Library Journal, 39 (1993) 146]. However, where sources of data and/or decisions are high volume encompass a large geographic area and cover a gamut of organizational entities, information gathering and fusing can be daunting [FEMA, Publication No. 229 (4) (1995)]. This paper analyzes the workflow typical in a disaster scenario and discusses the design considerations for a virtual information center (VIC) that can both efficiently and effectively coordinate and process a large number of information requests for disaster preparation/management/recovery teams. The proposed design is domain independent, uses a net-centric approach and can be readily exported to many other governmental and organizational decision environments. The prototype version of the system uses the object-oriented model in connecting to multiple databases across the Internet and has all the essential features that can readily be cloned to enlarge the system's scope.

A quiet Friday on a July afternoon was slowly settling towards what was promising to be a sunny three-day weekend over San Francisco Bay. The city was gearing for the annual Independence Day celebrations coming up on the following Monday. In his office at the CalTech Seismic Lab in Pasadena, John continued to monitor the earthquake measuring instruments with concentration. The seismograph had never been quiet but that was normal for the region. The city had been warned of the ‘big one’ for years but nothing major had occurred over the last 6 years. Since that time, the city had been planted with hundreds of sensors across the San Andreas Fault (Fig. 1). These sensors had been linked by an intricate emergency management system interconnecting several governmental and non-governmental agencies over the cyberspace.At 3:46 pm, the monitors started picking up earth movements on a scale that was unusual and indicative of a major shake. The seismograph began swinging wildly. The emergency system issued out warnings to all. An adrenaline rush struck John. A big one indeed was coming. He knew it would reach the city in minutes. He collected himself and instantaneously activated the virtual information center (VIC) he had been trained to operate for just an emergency. In nanoseconds, all the information centers working under it were on standby to take a barrage of information requests from the disaster management team. The system itself was proactively searching for life-saving information to be passed along as potential warnings to the team. Years of effort in designing the workflow for the dream VIC and building the system were now paying off. The above scenario may well sound futuristic. But the technology for implementing such systems is already beginning to evolve. The explosion of telecommunications technology, the ever expanding Internet, the availability of inter-platform connectivity software and theoretical progress made in group decision and negotiation are all making the concept of the VIC for humanitarian assistance/disaster relief a reality more than ever before.

Initial experience with the VIC framework and simulations show promise for the overall approach proposed in this study in developing Web-centric disaster management systems. Most of the expectations in terms of information accuracy, response time, and value were met, further confirming the feasibility of the concept. The object-oriented design coupled with the workflow modeling was a powerful combination in exploiting the new trends in the Internet and programming technologies. The utmost shortcomings were felt in the area of collaboration and generating RAFs in push format due to limitations of available tools. Currently, effort is under way in improving the prototype through streamlining of VIC processes, enriching the knowledge bases, embedding intelligence and further enhancing the transparency of the net-centric transactions. The final version is planned to have the ability to deal with multi-dimensional and rapidly changing data characteristic of disaster emergencies. This will allow the system to accumulate critical decision information for decision-makers while guarding against the information overload in the crisis planning and execution process. This task will focus on providing the team managers with tools that will quickly distill the voluminous quantities of retrieved data/information package into knowledge. It will also intelligently organize and present information in advanced visualization formats, such as electronic briefing books or watch boards, tailored to specific crises. Users will be able to drill down to the underlying data, if desired. The briefing books or watch boards must be able to provide for an arbitrary mix of text, diagrams, equations, tables, images (single frames or live video), spreadsheets, recorded sound, etc. All of these formats must be bundled within a common ‘envelope’ to be stored, transmitted, and read (played) as a coherent document entity. The briefing functionality must also include robust analysis and collaboration tools to enable exploitation of data relationships, develop corporate memory, and facilitate group/team collaboration and information sharing. The interface will facilitate video-, audio-, and text-based collaboration.