Defining critical information requirements and quality in cooperative disasters management

This dissertation investigates the role of information and its quality in cooperative disaster management environment from shared situational awareness perspective. Due to the rapid development of information and communications technology the amount of information available in disaster situations has grown tremendously. The challenge regarding the information sharing has shifted from lack of information to the finding the relevant information which places challenge in time critical disaster environment. In addition the quality of the information may not meet the needs and therefore the response actions can remain inefficient. Even though most of shared information disaster management contains spatial reference the full potential in exploiting the geographic information and related analyses has not been achieved. In this study a framework for defining the critical information requirements and the related quality aspects in disaster management was presented. The study was based on materials collected from several domestic and international disaster management exercises. The study identified three key areas that are related to the critical information requirements in disaster management. As the information is context dependent the goals of the actors and time, data and resources available together with values involved in the cooperation were found to be relevant for accessing the critical information requirements. The methods suitable for describing the interconnected activities were found to be affected by the level of cooperation and predictability of disaster environment. Therefore the level of details that can be acquired in defining of the critical information requirements is affected by the level of cooperation and operating environment. The role of different types of geographic information analyses in different phases of disasters were also studied to reveal the potential that could be exploited in different environments. In addition an information quality framework was developed to meet the needs of the cooperative disaster response organization. The conclusion of the study is that in order for the disaster response organization to be able to define the critical information requirements the context, goals and the quality aspects needs to be taken into account as well. The systematic development of response efforts can occur only when the operating environment is perceived comprehensively.