Supporting Critical Multi-Organization Collaboration during Response to Catastrophic Events

Abstract

The past two years have shown both the power of nature and the complexity of preparing for and responding to extreme events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes/typhoons, and floods. These events, and future catastrophic events, will require coordination and collaboration between multiple government and non government organizations across national and state borders. This collaboration will require the discipline necessary to share common processes and procedures, and the agility to improvise plans and actions as situationally required. Information technology must be used to create an eRegion, enabling the shared situational assessments and adequately supporting the collaborative, distributed decision making to produce required decisions and future action plans. The role of information technology in developing these capabilities is discussed in the context of two seismic scenarios, the US New Madrid Seismic Zone, and the Adriatic Seismic region.