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Resource sharing using UICDS™ framework for incident management

Basit Shafiq (Center for Information Management, Integration and Connectivity (CIMIC), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA)
Soon Ae Chun (College of Staten Island‐City University of New York, Staten Island, New York, USA)
Vijay Atluri (Center for Information Management, Integration and Connectivity (CIMIC), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA)
Jaideep Vaidya (Center for Information Management, Integration and Connectivity (CIMIC), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA)
Ghulam Nabi (Center for Information Management, Integration and Connectivity (CIMIC), Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA)

Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy

ISSN: 1750-6166

Article publication date: 16 March 2012

1310

Abstract

Purpose

Pertinent information sharing across various government agencies, as well as non‐governmental and private organizations, is essential to assess the incident situation, identify the needed resources for emergency response and generate response plans. However, each agency may have incident management systems of its choice with valuable information in its own format, posing difficulty in effective information sharing. Application‐to‐application sharing cross agency boundaries will significantly reduce human efforts and delay in emergency response. Information sharing from disparate systems and organizations, however, requires solving of the interoperability issue. The purpose of this paper is to present the UICDS™‐based resource sharing framework as a step toward addressing the afore‐mentioned challenges.

Design/methodology/approach

A prototype middleware system is developed using a standards‐based information sharing infrastructure called UICDS™ (Unified Incident Command and Decision Support™), an initiative led by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology division. This standards‐based middleware, resource management plug‐in utilizes the ontology of organizational structure, workflow activities and resources, and the inference rules to discover and share resource information and interoperability from different incident management applications.

Findings

The middleware prototype implementation shows that the UICDS™‐based interoperability between heterogeneous incident management applications is feasible. Specifically, the paper shows that the resource data stored in the Resource Directory Database (RDDB) of the NJ Office of Emergency Management (NJOEM), Hippocrates of the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services (NJDHSS) can be discovered and shared with other incident management systems using the ontology and inference rules.

Research limitations/implications

This study illustrates the possible solutions to the application to application interoperability problem using the DHS initiated interoperability platform called UICDS™.

Originality/value

The resource discovery and emergency response planning can be automated using the incident domain ontology and inference rules to dynamically generate the location‐based incident response workflows.

Keywords

Citation

Shafiq, B., Ae Chun, S., Atluri, V., Vaidya, J. and Nabi, G. (2012), "Resource sharing using UICDS™ framework for incident management", Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 41-61. https://doi.org/10.1108/17506161211214813

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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