e-Government%20Integration%20with%20Web%20Services%20and%20Alerts:%20A%20Case%20Study%20on%20an%20Emergency%20Route%20Advisory%20System%20in%20Hong%20Kong

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e-Government Integration with Web Services and
Alerts A Case Study on an Emergency Route
Advisory System in Hong Kong
Dickson K. W. CHIU Senior Member, IEEE Dickson Computer Systems kwchiu_at_acm.org, dicksonchiu_at_ieee.org
Cherrie W.W. NG Dept. of Computer Science Hong Kong University of Science Technology cs_cherrie_at_hotmail.com
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Application Background

• Many public organizations and governmental
  departments offering useful services over the
  Internet
• Increasing support of programmatic interfaces to
  these resources through Web services
• Web services orchestration in e-Government
  processes integration and services
• Case study Emergency Route Advisory System
  (ERAS)
• complexity and urgency requirements
• integrates information from disparate and
  heterogeneous sources
• intelligent computations at the back-end
• integrates with the processes of the emergency
  call centers at the front-end
• reuse of existing software design and components
• increasing demand of ambulance service in Hong
  Kong but inadequate ambulances

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Stakeholders of the Emergency Route Advisory
System
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Conceptual Model for Alerts in ERAS
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Example Urgency Level Description
Urgency Level Description
Low General travel route information search.
Normal FSCC call (e.g., patients request)
Urgent emergency call center (e.g., traffic accident)
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Conceptual Model for Transportation Network
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Road Network Example and its Representations
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Deployment Diagram of the Whole System
Civil Users
Call Center Process Management
Emergency Route Advisory System (ERAS)
Fire service
Route Advisory System (RAS)
Emergency Route Search Agent
Search Agent
Police
Caller Agent
Alert Monitor
Route database
Traffic/Location Knowledge Base
Location Agent
Hospital
Alert Management System (AMS)
Log database
Traffic / Location Knowledge base
Admin Module
Traffic Information Agent
Traffic Information Agent
Route Information Agent
Emergency Vehicles
route information
Traffic condition
Transportation Department
Public Transportation
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AMS Mechanism
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Typical life cycle of a route alert
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Route Finding Algorithm

• Based on our HICSS38 paper on Route Advisory
  System (RAS)
• Route-based Dijkstras algorithm (RD-algorithm)
• traveling time is used as the cost metric
• Heuristics
• Search Area Limit
• Cost Bound
• Knowledge Based Finding

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ERAS Enhancements

• Add the traffic conditions for a more accurate
  estimation of the traveling time for civil use
• Reuse the software modules from the ERAS and feed
  the traffic condition information directly from
  the Transport Department website
• This will not affect the performance of the ERAS
  and helps scale up
• RAS can also serve as a backup system in case of
  disastrous break down of the ERAS

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User request under authorization policy system
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Workflow of Emergency Call Center
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Advantages of ERAS

• Improve the integration and automation of the
  current emergency call centers for the provision
  of quality services effectively and efficiently
• Increases the efficiency of the ambulance call
  service and helps the tightly staffed emergency
  call centers through process automation
• Reuse existing design and software (AMS, RAS,
  etc.)
• Web Services technology provides the underlying
  open platform for integration

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AMS Advantages

• Handles urgent and error-prone conditions and
  possible exception cases
• Mediates variety of parties and personnel to
  liaise with
• Automates the required communications and
  integrates the processes to minimize the delay
  and costs involved in inefficient manual calls
  and retry calls
• Keeps track and monitors alerts
• Captures the knowledge and experiences of the
  call center staff

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Future Work

• Detailed performance evaluation of the system
• Compare the service response time to the existing
  practice
• Effects of the tuning parameters inside the ERAS
  order processing and turnaround time
• How detail heuristics could be best formulated
• Use questionnaires to evaluate the satisfaction
  of various stakeholders
• Simulations for the scalability and robustness

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Question and Answer
Thank you!