Self-Organizing Information Systems for Disaster Management

In recent years, the utilization of self-organizing, wireless, ad-hoc networks, such as sensor networks and embedded systems, has become more and more attractive. Potential applications include automation of business activities, traffic control as well as advanced monitoring systems for buildings or wildlife. Our goal is to integrate different selforganizing networks with geographic information systems to implement computer-supported disaster management. Hence, in our understanding a so-called self-organizing information system contains both dynamic, self-contained networks and stable information systems. A selforganizing network consists of individual nodes which execute location-based services, i.e. measure the temperature or vibration in a specific region. Even if these nodes autonomously monitor their environment, they are not isolated but interact with other nodes. This is the only way to achieve a gainful analysis and evaluation of collected data. An application example how different self-organizing networks can efficiently cooperate in a disaster event is given in Figure 1. Such an integration poses new technical challenges. First, these networks are characterized by self-contained, heterogeneous nodes which independently perform services for higher-level system layers. There is no central component co-