Dynamic Incident Management

This research represents a collaborative effort between the IISIS Laboratory, University of Pittsburgh and the MITRE Corporation, a federally funded research and development corporation, to improve local Emergency Preparedness & Response (EP&R) operations through enhanced data integration and interoperability. Specifically, the project seeks to improve the assessment of situational risk to emergency managers and to increase the timely flow of situational data to operating units and emergency operations centers (EOCs). Federal efforts and commercial offerings have not been successful in responding to the detail and complexity of local EP&R in a direct fashion. The project will focus on the design, development, and evaluation of a flooding scenario that will replay the events, interactions, and operating conditions of Tropical Storm Ivan in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Region on September 17-18, 2004. The research will capture and process historical operational data for use in EOC tools and other decision support software. It will use the JIISIS prototype as a baseline platform for an EP&R test and evaluation environment in the eight communities affected by Tropical Storm Ivan. This research will further develop the JIISIS prototype so that it supports a robust set of sociotechnical decision support functions to enhance local EP&R operations that would be applicable to other environments exposed to future flooding risk. This project was initiated for one year, October 1, 2008 - September 30, 2009, with the possibility of further development in a second project year.