A Semantic Web Services GIS Based Emergency Management Application

In an emergency situation, relevant information about involved elements is required. This information ranges from demographic data, weather forecasts and sensor data, available transportation means, presence of helpful agents, land use and cover statistics or values, etc. Moreover, the emergency management process is dynamic as it involves several definite steps, described in standard procedures from which the Emergency Officer (EO) should not depart without good reason. Multiple agencies own the relevant data and possess parts of emergency related knowledge. Exchanging this information by interacting on a personal/phone/fax basis is slow and may even be error prone. Using traditional Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to handle specifically Spatial-Related Data (SRD) is not always satisfactory, since data sources are not always suitable exposed and often present various semantics. In an emergency situation, such barriers are unacceptable and the whish of a more complete interoperability through the network is often expressed1. The proposed Emergency Management Application (EMA) is a decision support system based on Semantic Web Services (SWS) technology, which assists the EO in the tasks of retrieving, processing, displaying, and interacting with only emergency relevant information, more quickly and accurately. As a result, the involved agencies become able to extend their knowledge about the emergency situation by making use of different functionalities based on date held by other agencies which otherwise might not be accessible to them or slow to obtain manually. Our work represents a practical e-Government application, where the stakeholders are the governmental agencies, and the end-users are governmental employees. The application has been designed for the Emergency Planning Department of the Essex