ABSTRACT
Abstract: A key challenge in emergency management is the efficient management of resources-both human (e.g., response teams) and material (e.g., tents and food supplies). A large-scale event such as a cyclone/hurricane, earthquake, or tsunami can potentially involve tens of thousands (or more) of resource requests and offers. Sophisticated information systems are required for managing the necessary information exchanges between resource requesters, owners, coordinating agencies, and other parties, and for tracking the status of deployed resources. These systems must be scalable and support cross-organizational cooperation. To meet these requirements, they should ideally be based on open standards that allow interoperation between different resource management system (RMS) implementations, as well as interoperation and integration with other types of emergency management software. While some of the software systems already in use within the emergency sector do provide support for selected resource management tasks, open standards-based software for resource management does not yet exist. This chapter reviews the current state of the art in software for resource management, provides an overview of the Resource Messaging standard under development within the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) standards organization, and introduces a prototypical RMS that we are developing based on this emerging standard.
