BRIDGE Risk Analyzer: A Collaborative Tool for Enhanced Risk Analysis in Crisis Situations

When a crisis occurs, such as a fire in a chemical facility, difficult decisions need to be made based on assessment of risk. Is it safe enough for responders to enter the area? Do we need to evacuate the public from the nearby area? Assessing risks may require information from a number of different sources, as well as collaboration across organizations and management levels. In this paper we present ongoing work to develop a collaborative tool to support risk analysis in crisis situations. The tool will be tightly integrated with a complementary tool to make coordinated situation assessments, planning, decision making, information gathering and sharing, thereby providing a unified and integrated crisis management support facility.