During an emergency, laws designed for normal operations and circumstances may sometimes hinder response efforts, potentially endangering the public's health rather than protecting it. Pursuant to declared states of emergency, however, officials may be authorized to waive or suspend some provisions of state law to address emergency conditions. Such authority can play a critical role in response...

My dissertation work focuses on the motivation for adopting emergency response technology in community settings. The main purpose of my study is to understand various factors that affect community members’ motivation and ability to participate in ICT-enabled emergency response. The key questions my research intends to answer are: What motivates community members to adopt and use emergency respo...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a synthesis and overview of a multipart research study involving the design, exploration, and validation of an enterprise architecture and framework. The methodology includes the use of two case studies and validation through a national conference. While the authors have reported on the elements of this research, only recently has its completion allowed f...

The hazardous materials risk management process involves a set of crucial logistical decisions referring to the planning of the hazardous materials transportation and the organization of the emergency response operations. The objective of this paper is to present a Decision Support System for hazardous Materials Transportation Risk Management that covers integrated hazardous materials distribut...

Having the right information at the right time is crucial to make decisions during emergency response. To fulfill this requirement, emergency management systems must provide emergency managers with knowledge management and visualization tools. The goal is twofold: on one hand, to organize knowledge coming from different sources, mainly the emergency response plans (the formal knowledge) and the...