Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Improving our knowledge of and capabilities to handle disasters and crises is not simply a matter of more information processing and more reliable communication and computation. It needs the exchange of information between many different scientific and technology disciplines and a much better understanding of engineering complex C4I systems-of-systems. This discussion paper will address the need for and purpose of an international community and how to obtain focus and transfer of scientific results.

Across Europe emergency physicians are still using paper-based emergency report forms to document medical procedure at accident scenes. The forms are quite similar, but they differ in certain parameters or attributes. There are ongoing endeavours to combine the paper-based protocols and then transfer this new protocol standard into a software-based Emergency Patient Care Report Form (EPCRF). However during the transformation from a paper-based to an electronic solution, many problems occur. To keep the users’ acceptance of the emergency medical services personnel, it is crucial that electronic EPCRF supports the central process efficiently. Therefore key elements within the emergency report form are the anatomical diagrams and the chronological sequence diagrams. These diagrams allow the emergency physician to track and record patient’s parameters in a very fast and understandable and user friendly way.

The design of easy-to-use mobile systems for collecting and handling emergency medical care data in the field can significantly improve the effectiveness of rescue operations. In particular, this paper focuses on the design and evaluation of a mobile application that replaces ambulance run paper sheets. First, we discuss the limitations of traditional ambulance run paper sheets. Then, we present the PDA-based system we have developed. Finally, we discuss in detail the usability study we have carried out with first responders.

The main priorities of emergency medicine are to rescue lives and to limit the damage to life and limb of the patient as much as possible. The emergency physician analyzes the situation at the accident scene and chooses the appropriate first aid methods as well as the follow-on medical techniques at the hospital. The goal of CANIS - the Carinthian Notarzt (emergency physician) Information System - aims at the establishment and optimization of the information stream between the emergency rescue vehicle (ERV) or emergency rescue helicopter (ERH), and/or the receiving hospital. To achieve this, a feasible hardware setup must be established which meets the challenging requirements of an emergency situation.

In this paper we consider disaster management as the coordination of resources in space and time, and contrast this with the Joint Operational Picture (JOP) used in military planning. The basic premise is that the processes involved in the collection and management of information could interfere with the priorities of dealing with immediate demands on ‘rescuers’ and their managers. Thus, we explore ways in which collaboration could be made as implicit as possible. The paper includes small-scale user trials of prototypes to highlight potential benefits and shortcomings. The paper concludes with consideration of how brokering approaches to coordination could be realized using the prototypes described in this paper.

AMIRA provides a multi-modal solution that significantly improves the accessibility and resources available for supporting urgent and critical decisions that must be taken by mobile workers, operating individually or in multi-discipline collaborations, at their point of intervention in an event. By integrating reusable search components and collaboration methods, the AMIRA platform has been used to create various multi-modal applications for use by mobile workers operating in safety or business critical situations in the field. The analysis of proof-of-concept applications tested in the field produced evidence demonstrating that AMIRA added value to the decision making process by providing information that is not currently available through existing support mechanisms.

The management of resources is a great challenge for commanders in Search and Rescue operations and has a strong impact on all areas of operation control, as command-and-communication structure, geo-referenced information, and operational tasks are inter-connected with complex relations. During an operation these are subject to dynamic changes. For an efficient operation control commanders need access to up-to-date information in their mobile working environment. This paper presents a new approach to manage resources and their relations in an operation. It is based on ontologies to build a model of an operation and Description Logic reasoning to provide enhanced decision support.

In this paper, the potential of Mobile Spatial Interaction for Emergency Response Technologies is presented. The following basic advantages compared to traditional location awareness technologies have been identified: meaningful interaction with real-world objects, efficient selection and access, continuous interplay of virtual and spatial information, and accurate match with the user’s task goals. The technical background for mobile spatial interaction as well as implications for further research are discussed.

This paper describes ongoing work and research perspectives for integrating cartographic presentations into decision-support systems for crisis management and resource planning in emergency situations. The spatial visualizations shall improve the communication and analysis of the situation at different decision levels. The information has to be adequately prepared and presented according to the user’s role, position and utilized device. The outstanding characteristics of the presented solution are (1) a context-dependent selection and visualization of data through location-based services and (2) a visualization of the situation at different perspectives. This reduces the amount of presented data and improves the understanding of the user’s current environment. The paper describes an application prototype designed for the European project SHARE and outlines perspectives by introducing time as another information dimension.

We developed a system that uses radio frequency identification (RFID) tags both as the source of location information and as data storage units to record messages or information in disaster situations. Our system uses hybrid RFID tags, which consist of a passive (non-battery) tag and an active (battery-driven) tag. The system has been evaluated in disaster prevention trainings by local communities and rescue teams.