CRISIS MANAGEMENT

1. CRISIS MANAGEMENT CRISIS MANAGEMENT MASRG 2008 Distributed Coordination of First Responders Ancile: Pervasively Shared Situation Awareness Context-Aware Adaptation of Access-Control Policies *images from Hurricane Katrina MASRG 2008 Distributed Coordination of First Responders Ancile: Pervasively Shared Situation Awareness Context-Aware Adaptation of Access-Control Policies *images from Hurricane Katrina

2. Crisis Management • Forms of crisis management: • Immediate response to a disaster • Recovery efforts • Impact reduction of possible future crises • Essence: …timely access to the right information by the right person or agency • Characterized by possible large-scale, multi-organizational operation • Goal: • Save lives • Preserve infrastructure and community resources • Reestablish normalcy within community

3. Current Procedures • The NRP and NIMS are companion documents • National Incident Management System (NIMS) • Template for coordinating emergency preparedness and incident management among various agencies • 130 page document detailing system outline, structure and infrastructure, terminology, and protocols • “This system will provide a consistent nationwide approach for Federal, State, and local governments to work effectively and efficiently together to prepare for, respond to, and recover from domestic incidents, regardless of cause, size, or complexity.“ • National Response Plan • An “all-hazards plan” based on the NIMS template

4. Distributed Coordination of First RespondersJoseph B. Kopena, Evan A. Sultanik, Robert N. Lass, Duc N. Nguyen, Christopher J. Dugan, Pragnesh J. Modi, William C. Regli • Problem details: • Responders must make local decisions with globally optimal effects • Requires propagation of dynamic constraints • Coordination of decisions is crucial • DCOP may provide coordination of constraints between groups in a manner afforded by the unreliable crisis domain. • Decentralized • Efficient utilization of cheap mobile computational resources • Limited bandwidth consumption • Process: Evac-Op • Agent shares subset of constraints to find partial solution • Agents’ partial solutions converge to a globally optimal solution • Further research in DCOP: • Application to dynamic environments • Adaptability to network topology and characteristics • Increasing robustness

5. Ancile: Pervasively Shared Situation AwarenessFernando Maymi, Manuel Rodriguez-Martinez, Yi Qian • Distributed architecture for information sharing • Keeps track of team members • Notifies team members of event of interest in their vicinity • Events • Command generated: operations command and control creates event and propagates through network • Tactical generation: soldier or rescuer in field creates event • Geoptemporal information may be proactively provided • Once in range, ancile devices exchange information of interest • What information is considered interesting? • Proximity triggers information exchange. • Is this enough? • Designed for military use. • How applicable is this to a crisis domain? • What differences are significant?

6. Context-Aware Adaptation of Access-Control PoliciesArjmand Samuel, Arif Ghafoor, Elisa Bertino • Authorities need access to information, particularly at times of crisis. • Control policies should be flexible during crisis to enable access despite location or time • Approach: enable/disable constraints for a time or location based on runtime event or triggers • Normal constraints vs. Crisis constraints • NC: day-to-day operations; enabled policies by default • CC: define crisis operation policies; disabled by default • Weakly enforced users vs. Strongly enforced users • Challenges • Developing agile, efficient interoperation mechanisms for access-control systems • Developing tools for real-time policy harmonization • Difficult to create access-control policies handling unpredictable constraints • Policy verification

7. Brainstorm… • Distributed constraint optimization • Distributed situation-based information dissemination • Context-based adaptive access-control policies • How is crisis management different than a traditional logistics problem? • Urgency of context • Unknown/dynamic demands for resources • Ancile wants to identify these demands, and Evac-Op wants to satisfy them • Can social factors be exploited? • Katrina blogs • MySpace evacuation policy? • Ghost events/needs/constraints from which people’s confirmations make real events transform from ghosts to materialized events

8. Proposal Opportunities • Unified Incident Command and Decision Support (UICDS) • Department of Homeland Security • Currently in phase II • Description: The emergency first responder community has a need for information acquisition, information assessment and course of action development, decision-making, and direction. These capabilities are key elements in an effective response to any emergency situation. This need has become more critical as the first responder community employs more coordinated responses to emergency situations and new threats facing our nation. It is crucial to ensure that all information is managed properly to ensure optimal use in supporting command and control and decision support. • Emergency Notification System/Services