Towards a taxonomy of crisis management simulation tools

Experimentation is an essential element to improve crisis management and to assess crisis management tools. Unfortunately, for the moment, real crisis management experimentations are episodic and generally focus on a specific geographical and/or thematic area. This is why the European DRIVER project aims to provide a test-bed platform where crisis management testing and experimentation can be carried out with a mix of live and simulated actions. To achieve this goal, simulation tools have to be identified, described and classified in order to (i) help the user to select tools and models based on the experimentation requirements and (ii) to allow the DRIVER platform to insure exchange information between simulated actions and live actions. This paper focuses on the taxonomy used to classify simulation tools relevant for crisis management. This taxonomy is divided into three main categories of characteristics: (i) business (type/topic of the simulation), (ii) legal (terms of use), (iii) technical (integration within the DRIVER platform and/or other crisis management (simulation) tools).