Mobile Computing for Disaster Emergency Management: Empirical Requirements Analysis for a Cooperative Crowdsourced System for Emergency Management Operation

Abstract

In large-scale civil emergencies such as floods, earthquakes, and extreme weather conditions, extended geographic areas and a great number of people may be affected by the unfortunate events. The wireless internet and the widespread diffusion of smart-phones and mobile devices make it possible to introduce new systems for emergency management. These systems could improve the efficiency of the interventions by transferring information between affected areas and a central decision support system. Information on the state of the infrastructures, on people displacement, and on every other important and urgent issue can be gathered in the disaster area. The central system can manage all the received information and communicate decisions back to people and also facilitate the exchange of information for different people that are still in the disaster area. This paper presents a requirement analysis for these kinds of systems. The presented analysis allows better tailoring of the features of these systems with the aim to meet the real need of emergency management operators and citizens.