Towards Integrated Information Management during Crises

Brisbane.
The next speaker at ANZDMC 2012 is Chris Fisher from the Queensland Department of Community Safety, who presents DCS’s ‘All Hazards’ approach to integrated information management. This is especially important in the context of disasters, in order to accelerate the provision of essential information to stakeholders and the public. But this is limited by existing barriers and silos – and it cannot simply be addressed through better information technology.

Disasters do not respect borders or organisational boundaries – and to address this, ‘All Hazards’ became an informational problem-solving exercise. It was an important recognition of ‘information’ as an independent entity in the disaster management process. The programme delivers planning and intelligence, decision support, resource management and coordination, public engagement, and shared situational awareness, and builds on a foundation of information exchange and interoperability.

Currently, planning and intelligence gathering, as well as the subsequent emergency response, lag some time behind the event itself; this is simply a systemic issue, and results in unmet needs in the time immediately after the event. Such lag can be reduced through improved situational awareness (which does not deliver perfect information, but does speed up the response); ideally, in fact, planning and intelligence can precede some foreseeable crisis events (such as floods).  Such improved information flows can also speed up the public and emergencies response.

This is further complicated by the complex, siloised, part-time nature of the emergency response infrastructure, involving a large number of organisations in varying combinations. These entities have different organisational cultures and agendas (and only some of them are accustomed to a strict command-and-control system), which need to be understood and respected in managing the emergency.

Current processes simply build on a pyramid from smaller to larger coordination centres, across which information flows in straight, sometimes long, lines. Future models will provide a more integrated information management framework, which connects these centres, enabling them to exchange information more directly – through an Emergency Information Management Centre (E-IMC) as a brokerage facility between organisations. To improve this brokerage, client organisations will also be placed in topical, connected clusters.