VII INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE

SAFETY AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT – THEORY AND PRACTISE

SAFETY FOR THE FUTURE – SeCMan 2021.

IMPACT OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION

TECHNOLOGIES FOR EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
MSc Katarina Janković1, Nemanja Pribičević2
1
General Staff of the Serbian Army, Directorate for Planning and Development J-5,
Technical-Experimental Center Belgrade, Republic of Serbia,
jankovickatarina95@gmail.com
2
RASEC Regional Association for Security and Crisis Management, Viktora Igoa 3,
Belgrade, Republic of Serbia, nemanjaprib@gmail.com
Abstract: We are witnessing that emergencies have increased in number, size and
destructive power. They threaten more people and larger areas in a variety of ways.
Therefore, an effective fight against them implies planning and preparation in
advance, despite the uncertainty regarding the time of occurrence, the specific type
of catastrophe, its strength and consequences. Access to reliable, accurate and
timely information, immediately before, during and after its completion, is vital to the
emergency management process. Information and communication technologies
(ICTs) play a significant role in disaster prevention, response mitigation and
recovery. Timely, predictable and effective information is essential for forces and
actors involved in rescue operations and decision-making processes. The aim of this
paper is to point out the new possibilities that modern information and
communication technologies bring in the field of emergency management.
Key words: emergency situation, emergency management, information and
communication technologies, warnings, disaster
1. INTRODUCTION
The Law on Disaster Risk Reduction and Emergency Management (Official Gazette of the
RS, No. 87/2018) in Article 2, item 7, defines an emergency situation as ‘a situation when
the risks and threats or consequences of disasters, emergencies and other hazards are
population, environment and material goods of such scope and intensity that their
occurrence or consequences cannot be prevented or eliminated by regular action of
competent bodies and services, which is why it is necessary to use special measures, forces
and means to mitigate and eliminate them, with an intensified regime ' . A catastrophe
means a natural disaster or technical-technological accident whose consequences endanger
the safety, life and health of a large number of people, material and cultural goods or the
environment on a larger scale, and whose occurrence or consequences cannot be prevented
or eliminated by regular action of the competent authorities. and services. Emergency
management includes the coordination and management of entities and forces of the
protection and rescue system for the purpose of organized disaster response and rapid
recovery; (Law on Disaster Risk Reduction and Emergency Management (Official Gazette
of RS, No. 87/2018), Article 2, item 8). The effectiveness of the response depends on the
ability to quickly assess the situation and mobilize the necessary resources, which is
significantly facilitated by the use of information and communication technologies (ICT)
and systems.
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) cover a wide range of
telecommunication devices and applications, which facilitate the flow of information.
Within crisis and disaster management, these devices and applications may be used
explicitly for hazards or crisis detection, information management, communication,
situational awareness, search and rescue efforts, and decision support systems. Everything
from cellphones and social media to unmanned aerial vehicles and weather stations are used
to collect, disseminate, and monitor various types of information and data to provide a
common operating picture. ICTs are continually evolving, with new features developed and
deployed at a near rapid pace. This development has had a unique impact on crisis and
disaster management, allowing for real-time communication and situational awareness, as
well as novel approaches to simulations and training.
With the near ubiquitous use of some devices, information is also no longer held solely by
government or private sector officials; ordinary citizens are also able to contribute to and
disseminate information during and after crises. For some segments of the population, this
ability to meaningfully contribute is not only empowering but necessary to highlight unmet
needs. Throughout the evolution of ICTs, new research and practical concerns have
highlighted persistent unmet needs of more vulnerable populations due to growing
interdependence and integration across jurisdictional boundaries worldwide. The continued
expansion of ICTs will most likely have a profound impact on this field in the future. This
entry explores several types of ICT currently used in crises and disasters, examines the
future direction (including opportunities and potential threats), and features points of
consideration due to the concerns for vulnerable populations and increased globalization.
2. TRENDS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION AND
COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES
Gartner (http://www.gartner.com/) as one of the leaders in this field, among others, provided
her vision of trends in the development of strategic technologies. The top 10 that indicated
for the period 2015-2017. year is shown in Table 1.
Table 1: 10 leading development trends for the period 2015-2017. years
(http://www.gartner.com/)[3]
2015 2016 2017
Merging the Real World
Digital Mesh Intelligent
and Virtual World
Artificial Intelligence and
Computing Everywhere Device Mesh Advanced Machine
Learning
Continuous & Ambient
The Internet of Things Intelligent Apps
User Experience
3D Printing 3D-Printing Materials Intelligent Things
Intelligence Everywhere Smart Machines Digital Advanced
Pervasive and Invisible Virtual Reality and
Information of Everything
Analytics Augmented Reality
Advanced Machine
Context-Rich Systems Digital Twins
Learning
Autonomous Agents and Blockchains and Distributed
Smart Machines
Things Ledgers
The New IT Reality
New IT Reallity Mesh
Emerges
 2015 2016 2017
Merging the Real World
Digital Mesh Intelligent
and Virtual World
Adaptive Security
ud/Client Computing Conversational Systems
Architecture
Software-Defined
Advanced System Digital Technology
Applications and
Architecture Platforms
Infrastructure
Mesh App and Service Mesh App & Service
Web-Scale IT
Architecture Architecture
Risk-Based Security and Internet of Things Adaptive Security
Self-protection Architecture and Platforms Architecture
According to Gartner, 25 billion connected devices will generate data on almost every
imaginable topic, which is, on the one hand, a great opportunity, but, on the other, a great
challenge, how to make sense of this abundance of data (Internet of Things, IoT). ). The
technologies and standards of the IoT platform (Internet of Things Architecture and
Platforms) represent a basic set of possibilities for communication, control, management and
securing endpoints in IoT. Gartner points out that IoT platform providers today are
fragmented and would benefit significantly from connecting to a system in which data is
more widely exchanged. Gartner calls this network of connected people, devices, content,
and services the Intelligent Digital Mesh [3].
Intelligent technology
Artificial Intelligence AI & Advanced Machine Learning is considered to have reached a
critical point where it will become more and more involved in almost every service, thing or
application enabled by technology. It will enable the shift from smart machines to intelligent
systems that understand, learn, adapt (change future behavior) and potentially act
independently. There is an implementation of the spectrum of intelligent applications and
things (Intelligent Apps & Things) - including virtual personal assistants (VPA) and smart
advisors, as well as robots, autonomous vehicles and drones, which operate in an
autonomous manner. As intelligent things develop and become more popular, they will
move from an independent to a collaborative (joint) model of work, in which intelligent
things communicate with each other and act in agreement to perform tasks [3].
Mesh
Support for intelligent digital ecosystems will be provided by a network that evolves by
fundamentally changing the user experience. Conversational Systems are being introduced,
which allow us to communicate with computers in natural language, using multiple
modalities (eg sight, sound, touch, etc.) instead of interacting with menus, forms and buttons
on a smartphone. This means moving from a model where people adapt to computers to a
place where the computer "hears" and adapts to people [3].
Sensor networks
The sensor network is a system that makes up a field of sensors of various types,
interconnected by a communication network. It contains individual (multifunctional) sensor
nodes capable of monitoring changes in the phenomenon that monitor and locally process
data and forward them to other nodes (aggregators) and / or devices. Thus, a number of
physical parameters important for the detection of changes in the controlled environment
can be monitored, such as humidity, temperature, sound, pressure, speed and direction,
chemical concentrations, vibrations, levels of pollutants and other quantities. Today, the
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is of special importance, in which the sensor nodes are
wirelessly connected to the communication network [3].
Internet of Things - IoT
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a technology that allows things used in everyday life to
connect via the Internet and improve their functionality [2]. The Internet of Things is one of
the fastest growing industries today, whose application can be found almost everywhere, in
cars, automated plants, household appliances, medical devices and the like.
The principle of operation of the Internet is based on built-in sensors that collect information
from the environment and send it through the communication network for processing. At the
Internet of Things devices can communicate with each other without human intervention
(machine to machine communication - M2M). Many IoT systems are based on cloud
computing computing) where ICT (information and communications technology) resources
such as infrastructure (servers, storage systems) and software solutions used as cloud service
to avoid the cost of building your own infrastructure. Also, some IoT systems generate large
amounts of data that need to be processed and analyze what is a major burden on the
infrastructure of individual businesses. Integration with the cloud computing infrastructure
provides ways to efficiently handle large amount of data at no significant cost.
Each IoT device has built-in sensors and a computer that controls them. The devices collect
data via sensors and forward it to the IoT platform via wireless communication networks.
The communication connection between the sensor and the platform in the "cloud" is
realized through a network gateway (Gateway), whose task is to manage data flow and
synchronization network protocols to enable interoperability between different systems. IoT
platform is a software system usually based on a "cloud" where data is processed and
analyzed and by which the overall operation of the IoT system is enabled. The user accesses
the data using user interface such as touch panels, smartphones, computers, etc. (Picture 1).

Figure 1. Basic components of the Internet of Things

Source: https://www.rfpage.com/what-are-the-major-components-of-internet-of-things
In the vision of IERC (European Research Cluster on the Internet of Things), the main goal
of the Internet of Things is to create smart environments / spaces and self-aware things for
various applications for the digital society. This poses new challenges to network
technologies, such as providing high data rates, supporting a significantly increased number
of users / devices, low latency (delay), low power consumption and low cost. This concept
additionally emphasizes the issues of information security and related issues of security of
systems, networks and applications, as well as, of course, the always current issues of
privacy [3].
No less of a challenge is how to solve the problem of the huge amount of data that IoT
devices will generate. All this data should be stored, analyzed and useful information and
conclusions should be drawn from them [2].Technologies such as big data processing,
machine learning and artificial intelligence can be used for that. One of the solutions is to
store this data in the cloud, where it will be analyzed and then acted upon [3].
3. THE INFLUENCE OF NEW INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION
TECHNOLOGIES ON EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
As one could imagine, ICT is used in nearly every aspect of crisis and disaster management,
much like it is used in almost every aspect of daily life. The near-ubiquitous use of wireless
devices has opened the market to a variety of applications. This section is organized around
ICT-type to provide an adequate (though, not comprehensive) overview of ICTs used in
crisis and disaster management, which includes; Communication, Situational Awareness,
Decision Support Systems, Search and Rescue, and Hazards Detection.
Analyzing the response of rescue teams in specific disaster cases, three main challenges in
the use of information and communication technologies have been identified [4].
1. Their extreme scalability is required - in relation to:
a. time - the time associated with the accident refers to the period before it occurs
(prevention and preparedness phases), while it occurs (response phase) and after it has
ended (recovery phase);
b. space - from physically small areas to accidents in geographically large areas (eg the
2011 earthquake in Japan and the accompanying tsunami);
c. actors - government services, non-governmental organizations (eg the Red Cross),
volunteers, members of social networks, individuals and other entities;
d. data - the question arises of managing a large amount of data, which is heterogeneous
in nature, in a way that is timely in terms of decision support. There is also the issue of
ensuring the privacy and security / reliability of private and sensitive data.
2. They must enable a computationally complex analysis of catastrophes, since,
mathematically, a catastrophe behaves like a nonlinear system that is sensitive to initial
conditions and for which there is no one optimal solution.
3. They must provide support for decision-making in extreme conditions, where situational
awareness is a key element of an effective response. Rescue teams must be able to
understand, visualize and trust the data they collect, and, given the physiological and
cognitive deficits due to working in extreme conditions (panic, anxiety, stress, confusion,
compromised health, excessive haste, denial, etc.) ICT support is necessary [5]
When it comes to emergency management, a 2012 study [4] listed seven ways ICT can
improve the process, among which the most significant were: improved a priori acquisition
of real-time data; data transfer and transformation to improve situational awareness;
optimizing the use of resources and logistics, as well as assisting in the recovery or
identification of victims and family reunification.
Special attention is paid to communication technologies and platforms for establishing a safe
and fast way of informing in the endangered area. Telephone systems for emergency
services and assistance (police - 192, firefighters - 193, as well as emergency services - 194)
are not designed in case of disaster, so they are not able to prioritize, ie to perform triage of
thousands of calls. A suitable system of communication in emergency situations should be
reliable, scalable and trustworthy, ie such that citizens can rely on it for accurate information
and instructions [3].
Access to reliable, accurate and timely information, immediately before, during and after a
disaster, is vital to the emergency management process. Otherwise, individuals and
institutions would be forced to make key decisions based on unverified, unfinished and
conflicting reports. In doing so, it must be taken into account that a disaster can significantly
affect the ability of individuals involved in protection and rescue to handle information
efficiently and effectively.
In the event of a disaster, it is necessary to transfer information ‘at the right time and in the
right form to the right person’, so special attention is paid to communication systems that
ensure the exchange of information between protection and rescue entities and the
population in the endangered area. In this sense, the use of radio and television, telephones
(fixed and mobile), SMS messages, amateur radio systems, the Internet and electronic
messages is often discussed [6]. In doing so, it is necessary to take into account the
reliability and availability of information channels in the event of a disaster - for example, if
there was a power outage, television messages would be useless. In the recent catastrophes
that have befallen the world (terrorist attacks, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods ...),
ICTs have played a significant role in responding to them. It turned out, however, that
communication was not always possible, due to damage to the communication infrastructure
and congestion of mobile networks, which required the development of new effective
disaster management strategies. New technologies in development will play a significant
role in this process. Thus, the dynamic and intensive development of ICT and sensor
technologies has brought completely new, until recently unimaginable, ways of managing
information, ie their collection, processing and distribution.
Connecting technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), smart sensors and sensor
networks, and ubiquitous computing to high-bandwidth wireless communication networks is
vital to improving the efficiency of emergency management [3].
Application of the Internet of Things (IoT) in emergency management
Things are becoming "smart" in the sense that sophisticated data processing and
communication capabilities will be built directly into the sensors. These possibilities can be
exploited in two ways [3,7].:
• sensors with self-description and wireless connectivity capabilities can be connected
locally to other sensors to form ad hoc sensor networks;
• The sensor can be used for “surveillance tasks”, using configurable notification policies to
interested consumers (eg send a notification only when the predefined thresholds are
exceeded). Such sensor systems must be integrated into other ICT systems that act as
providers of services and information to other systems, for which it is necessary to urgently
improve interoperability.
When it comes to urban environments, Intellistreets proposes that street lighting poles be
equipped with wireless technologies to provide additional functions, such as emergency
alarms, digital signaling, hazardous environment warnings, and two-way audio. With the
help of built-in sensors, additional information from the environment (what is heard, seen,
smelled, etc.) could be collected, as well as their processing and analysis on the spot [3].
Observing the possibilities offered by next-generation technologies, which people can use
and adapt in order to strengthen their own resilience to crises and catastrophes, will be
necessary in the coming years.
Sensor networks of smart homes will enable fire reports. Biometric scanners will not be used
to obtain personal documentation for verification of identity. Devices built into the things
we carry (Wearable devices) will enable early warning, search and rescue, as well as
communication of families, while drones, in addition to recordings, will provide temporary
establishment of communication links and networks, as well as delivery of necessary
equipment. and materials (eg medicines) in endangered areas [3]
Social networks and media
Social networks and media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, blogs) are emerging as an effective tool
to facilitate communication, cooperation, and coordination during emergencies. Thus,
comprehensive real-time data exchange via mobile devices and social media proved
extremely useful in the cases of Hurricane Sandy in Central and North America and the
earthquake in Italy, both in 2012, and the earthquake in Nepal in 2015 [3].
Different techniques are used to obtain the contextual information necessary for rescuers
from data from social networks. Some of the data (e.g. Twitter) has geotagged metadata,
with longitude and latitude coordinates. For those who do not provide precise geospatial
information, various techniques are applied, such as e.g. geoparsing (extracting mentions of
known locations from the message text). This approach turns social media into a virtual
sensor network that enables the collection and visualization of data (on damage, injured and
missing persons) [3].
Information visualization is a proven technique for communicating large, complex and
ambiguous data sets, as well as for their ‘translation’ into applicable knowledge [8].
Geographic information systems (GIS) ensure that a spatial determinant is added to the
information, which enables its visualization in the form of mapping. Crisis mapping (web-
based called ‘live mapping’, online mapping) increases situational awareness, providing
real-time visualization of data collected by many individuals [3].
Images from drones are increasingly being used to assess damage. However, unlike the ease
of obtaining these images in high resolution, their analysis remains a challenging task. That
is why different models of artificial intelligence are being developed that could
automatically detect damaged buildings in incoming images. Damage data can also be
obtained by analyzing sent Twitter messages related to the crisis situation, where with the
help of semantic analysis tools and collaborative knowledge bases, information on the
location and magnitude of damage is revealed, which are used to create an interactive crisis
map [3].
The next challenge in disaster management is data prioritization. The amount of data
collected and sent from vulnerable areas has increased. There are various geospatial data,
high resolution images and videos. Therefore, new methods are being sought for triage of
image data and for selecting what is important for all stakeholders. These and other
challenges point to the possibilities of additional research in the field of data filtering, text
classification, image processing and cognitive computing in order to solve the identified
problems [3].
4. CONCLUSION
Information and communication technologies are constantly evolving, with new functions
being developed and implemented at an almost rapid pace. Communication during crises
and disasters has become more complex. The constantly changing environment has
introduced a number of accompanying advantages and opportunities, as well as new and
constant weaknesses and threats.
The use of ICT during crises and disasters also offers many opportunities for actors and
protection and rescue forces. Several of these devices and software have led to the
empowerment of those affected. For example, wireless emergency alerts provide an
improvement to other communication tools to reach individual citizens regardless of their
travels. In addition, due to the rapid growth and adoption of smartphones among the younger
generations, certain racial and ethnic minorities, and some individuals with disabilities,
emergency communication can reach more populations than before. Citizens use social
media and tools for a variety of sources to contribute to hazard detection, situation
awareness, and organized recovery efforts. GIS mapping and remote detection tools provide
opportunities to visualize a common operational image for all relevant response personnel.
The potential use of virtual reality and drones can revolutionize training, simulation, and
search and rescue efforts. Together, these technologies empower citizens to take disaster risk
and engage in vulnerability reduction solutions, offering a path to transparency in decision-
making processes.
Research activities on the design, development and provision of an open, scalable, reliable
and secure information and communication infrastructure should be continued in order to
support all phases of emergency management. However, for the efficient and effective use
of modern technology in emergency management, it is necessary to carry out appropriate
training and preparation of human resources for the use of ICT to assess risks, support early
warning of disasters, behave adequately in crisis situations and support effective damage
assessment.
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