Alert Based Disaster Notification and Resource Allocation

1
Alert Based Disaster Notification and Resource
Allocation

• Dickson K.W. Chiu
• Senior Member, IEEE
• kwchiu_at_acm.org, dicksonchiu_at_ieee.org
• Drake T. T. Lin , Eleanna Kafeza, Minhong
  Wang,Haiyang Hu, Hua Hu, Yi Zhuang

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Introduction

• Disaster increasing frequency and severity
• epidemic outbreaks, natural disasters, major
  accidents, terrorist attacks
• SARS, Avian flu, tsunami,
• IS for disaster management badly required
• Unified framework for supporting all phases and
  activities
• different prediction, detection, and specific
  handling activities
• variety of organizations and personnel
• heterogeneous physical and information resources
• dynamic process and information integration
  approach
• human and system interactions
• resource allocation under urgency constraints
• timeliness in action
• Disaster Notification and Resource Allocation
  System (DNRAS)
• Based on Alert Management System (AMS)

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Example epidemic outbreaks

• SARS, Avian flu,
• Retrieve and analyze related patient records
• Monitor symptoms and patterns of spreading
• Records by fax or e-Mail result in
  mis-interpretation
• Serious consequences
• Timely notification - nearby countries
• Resource allocation
• Medicines and equipment
• Medical professionals
• Many parties in the interactions and negotiations
• Many estimations and uncertainties

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Requirements Overview
Local Government Authorities
Notification information
Storage
Pharmacies /HealthcareSupplies
Broadcast /Internet Media
Internet mobile devices
Mobile Individuals
Public/Victims
Experts
Officials
Administrators
Physicians

• Both human and computerized systems are involved
• Stakeholders have different degree of
  computerization
• Web Services supports both type of interactions
  in a unified framework

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Role of Alerts in Strategic IS / DSS
Disaster Management Processes and Workflows
DNRAS Actions Notification, Information Request, Resource Allocation
Alerts Managed by AMS
Web Services and Mobile Devices

• What are Alerts?
• Different from general events, alerts have more
  specific attributes, e.g., urgency and process
  requirements.
• Different from exceptions, they need not relate
  to abnormal behaviors.
• asynchronously received through business events /
  exceptions / incoming requests
• synchronously generated by internal business
  application
• handled by the AMS by requesting services from
• internal information systems
• management / human attention
• external e-Service providers
• 3R Retry, Reroute, Reassign

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System Architecture
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Alert Life Cycle
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System flow of a DNRAS node
Fetch next queuing request
DNRAS Scheduler Application Logic
Update response
Information request
Find the required information
Update the information
Generate and queue
in cached database
to cached database
required request
Information complete
Information
not complete
Aggregate the results
Reschedule the request
Receive request alert
Send request alert
Return an update response to
Send acknowledgement
from other DNRA node
the request node
to next node
Response
Alert ManagementSystem
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Alert Urgency Elevation

• Defining the policies according to which the
  urgency of the alert will be elevated
• Example

Urgency002 Action
Urgent Default
Very Urgent Submit a second alert to the pharmacy, notifying it about the approaching deadline
Critical Redirect the alert to another pharmacy or hospital that has the best expected response time
Very Critical Send the alert to several pharmacies and hospitals and accept those that respond early notify an administrator
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Web Services Summary

• Notification alerts - attend to the verification
  and identification of the specific disease
  problem using medical information
• General information alerts - inquires for general
  information
• Resource alerts - identify the place that can
  provide the requested information or resource
• Personal information alerts - give information
  for a specific person.
• Database query / update Web services.
• See paper for detailed parameter examples.

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Advantages of Web services

• System integration - flexible process
  orchestration in disaster management is able to
  integrate with legacy applications.
• Communication and Monitoring - the DARNS
  infrastructure provides an interoperable system
  architecture for creating an efficient
  communication and monitoring infrastructure in
  order to respond to disasters efficiently.
• Intelligence - Complex disaster problems can be
  identified and diagnosed in a timely way by
  alert-based data communication and information
  aggregation, and can be handled through flexible
  resource allocation and process orchestration.
• Scalability - easy to extend the system by adding
  more web service based functionalities into each
  node of DNRAS to improve data communication and
  process coordination.
• Reusability - The proposed architecture and Web
  services are reusable by other applications for
  flexible process orchestration in disaster
  management.

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Lessons Learned

• Studied Toronto SARS outbreak 2003 case.
• Scarborough-Grace hospital were not alerted to
  the possibility of an epidemic when several
  relatives of the first victim were found to be
  suffering from related symptoms and just
  considered TB
• Delays in identifying the outbreak are vital.
• Direct and efficient communication among
  different agencies required.
• When number of cases aggregated from the
  hospitals of a city reached a specific threshold,
  an alert for an epidemic disease could be
  propagated to the public health office of the
  region.
• Lack of isolation rooms ICQ quarantined for
  1214 days.
• But continue to transfer patients to other
  hospitals!!
• Effective communication and resource allocation
  is critical

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Lessons Learned (2)

• Physicians require efficient and immediate access
  to personal information files related to an
  epidemic outbreak.
• Second SARS victim died in York Central Hospital
  had been next to the first victim in
  Scarborough-Grace hospital.
• Information requests should be categorized
  structured, monitored, and associated with
  temporal deadlines.
• Efficient information retrieval, aggregation, and
  association might lead to an early diagnosis of
  the disease
• Communications, exchange of information, and
  notifications are crucial.

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Applicability Discussion

• Government authorities
• Resolve existing problems involved in unreliable
  manual procedures
• Handle exceptions
• Liaise with variety of parties and personnel
• AMS monitors / tracks such alerts
• Trials and simulations
• Emergency service providers (hospitals /
  pharmacies)
• Fast rescue and recovery
• Locate resource holders for quick delivery
• Decision coordination
• Mobile individuals (healthcare professionals)
• Ensure necessary and correct personnel involved
• Records / information retrieval
• Improved communications

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Summary

• DNRAS, which supports alert notification and
  resource allocation in the event of a disaster
• Cached information in the node and nested query
  requests to aggregate information
• AMS for the coordination of various functions at
  various stages of a disaster outbreak, including
  detection, notification, remedy, and recovery.
• DNRAS can be built and plugged into the existing
  infrastructure of various stakeholders to bridge
  internal systems and external partners to form a
  grid
• Improved information and process management

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Future Work

• Privacy control of personal records
• Exploring various settings of the urgency tables
• Context-awareness in ubiquitous communication
  management
• Complexity involved in the communication
  processes
• user communication management with agents
• Failure of commitments and their relation to
  contract enforcement
• Impact of cancellations, other possible
  exceptions
• E-negotiation subsystem for negotiating costs and
  allocation
• System dependability, such as redundant
  connection links and nodes

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QA

• Thank you!