Eventbased framework for disaster planning

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Event-based framework for disaster planning

• Adriaan ter Mors, Jeroen Valk, Cees Witteveen

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The aim of disaster planning
E.L. Quarantelli differentiate between the
planning for and the management of a disaster.
Disaster planning determine the emergency
response strategy what must we do, in general,
and who is responsible Disaster management
tactical decision making in response to the
emergency at hand, and the contingencies arising
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Shortcomings in current Dutch disaster plans

• Long, paper-based, notationally challenged
• Dependencies between activities are only
  specified vaguely
• Information on one subject is dispersed
  throughout the document
• It is unclear which parts of the document should
  be read by which emergency responders

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Proposal for a new disaster plan format

• Tasks specify the basic work that needs to be
  done
• A Hierarchy relationship between tasks encodes a
  task-subtask relation
• Precedence constraints specify dependencies
  between tasks
• Events can both trigger and inhibit the execution
  of a task

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Example disaster plan fragment

• graphical
• concise
• tasks and events require textual elaboration

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Disaster management
Based on the disaster plan
A (computer) system built around the disaster
plan would allow

• Plan monitoring
• Deployment of agent technologies for e.g. task
  allocation and plan repair

Task fight fire
Agents
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Questions?