in 2002, david alexander wrote principles of emergency planning and management. long a standard reference work in that book he described the processes of preparing for and responding to disasters, crises, and civil contingencies. he based the work on principles because he wanted to dissociate it from any particular system of emergency management. then, as now, many books in this subject are tie...

This paper describes and discusses analysis of an emergency management exercise. In the exercise scenario, different emergency management organizations jointly try to cope with a forest fire and related incidents. The Extended Control Model is utilized for examination of the establishment of en emergent emergency response organization. Ambiguity in how functions are to be handled in a large eve...

Emergency management (EM) is a very important issue with various kinds of emergency events frequently taking place. One of the most important components of EM is to evaluate the emergency response capacity (ERC) of emergency department or emergency alternative. Because of time pressure, lack of experience and data, experts often evaluate the importance and the ratings of qualitative criteria in...

We introduce a k-response set as a set of vertices where responders can be placed so that given any set of k emergencies, these responders can respond, one per emergency, where each responder covers its own vertex and its neighbors. A weak k-response set does not have to worry about emergencies at the vertices of the set. We define Rk and rk as the minimum cardinality of such sets. We provide b...

In this study, security and safety in rural parts of Sweden is investigated. New ways of organizing for efficient response can be found in the extended collaboration between societal sectors and in utilizing the local social capital. New categories of first responders and their requirements are identified and we propose non-technical and technical solutions as support. The results’ application ...

Dashun Wang1; 2, Yu-Ru Lin3; 4, and James P. Bagrow5; 6 1Center for Complex Network Research, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA 2Center for Cancer Systems Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA 3College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA 4Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA 5Engineeri...

In large-scale disaster events, infrastructure owners are faced with many challenges in deciding the allocation ofresources for preparation and response actions. This decision process involves building situation awareness, evaluating course of action, and effecting response. This paper describes a modeling and simulation system called CIMS that presents a visual environment for assessing the ca...

In the aftermath of mass-casualty events, key resources (such as ambulances and operating rooms) can be overwhelmed by the sudden jump in patient demand. To ration these resources, patients are assigned different priority levels, which is called triage. According to triage protocols in place, each patient’s priority level is determined based on that patient’s injuries only. However, recent work...