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Design principles for critical incident response systems

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Abstract

The national incident management system (NIMS) was developed so that responders from different jurisdictions and disciplines could work together to respond to natural and manmade disasters and emergencies, including acts of terrorism. The NIMS document provides a set of guidelines about practices but it does not make explicit the design requirements for information systems to support the management of critical incidents. Though there are academic and practitioner papers in the general area of emergency management, there is a lacuna of literature discussing how to design information systems to support critical incident response. In this paper we develop a set of design principles that are grounded in emergency management concepts and also in the insights from the real response managers in the Western New York area. The set of design principles provide a foundation for the development of critical incident response systems.

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Notes

  1. The impact zones are illustrated as circular only for the sake of simplicity. Environmental effects such as wind or rain may change the shape and development pattern of an impact zone.

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Acknowledgments

A preliminary version of this work was presented at ISI 2005 in Atlanta. We thank the conference attendees for critical comments that have improved the paper. This research is supported by NSF under Grant # 0705292 and by a UB2020 grant. The usual disclaimer applies. We would like to thank Commissioner Dean Messing (Erie County Emergency Services), Buffalo Department of Homeland Security Chief Roger Lander, Tonawanda Emergency Services Coordinator Dennis Carson, Captain Greg Blossat (Buffalo Police) and Lt. Stephen McGonagle (Amherst Police), Amherst Fire Chiefs James Zammanek, Dave Humbert, James Quigley, UB Environmental Affairs Chiefs James Guy and Joe Raab, Police Chiefs John Grella (SUNY, Buffalo) and John Baker (Niagara University), CEO Tom Maxian (Twin City Ambulance, WNY) for their time and effort.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management Science and Systems, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, 14260, USA

    Rui Chen, Raj Sharman & H. Raghav Rao

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, 14260, USA

    H. Raghav Rao & Shambhu Upadhyaya

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  1. Rui Chen
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  2. Raj Sharman
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  3. H. Raghav Rao
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  4. Shambhu Upadhyaya
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Correspondence to Rui Chen.

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Chen, R., Sharman, R., Rao, H.R. et al. Design principles for critical incident response systems. ISeB 5, 201–227 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-007-0046-0

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