Emergency Management & Communication Workflows

Improving the coordination of citizens, relief workers, operation control centers and emergency task forces through communication workflows optimization

The KUBAS Project – Koordination ungebundener vor-Ort-Helfer zur Abwendung von Schadenslagen –  aims to enable and improve the coordination of on-site volunteers during emergencies by providing

• dissemination of help searches
• coordination of relief efforts/supporting measures
• updates on site status
• Volunteered Geographic Information for creating crisis maps.

Project partners develop an overall solution to efficiently and effectively merge the activities of on-site volunteers with those of institutional relief units and senior managment. In order to ensure the best possible involvement of the general population, the project pursues a holistic and cyclic approach covering the phases of prevention, coping and recovery and applies current communication technology and IT supported decision support.

Architecture Specification and Implementation

52°North develops software for a communicator component and implements a prototype of a communication workflow for the communication between the KUBAS platform and the access system for volunteers (e.g. App, Web, SMS, SNS).

Explicitly, 52°North develops the core architecture of the KUBAS System, which consists of several reusable components. We use the Java Spring Framework to specify a REST interface that enables various different clients (e.g. Volunteer App, Task Manager) to coordinate help efforts and help searches. We also model and implement the KUBAS System’s sub processes (e.g. coordinating help efforts or notifying volunteers) as business processes with the Camunda BPM engine. This approach enables an automatic workflow, which provides disaster control authorities with much needed support for crisis relief efforts.

In addition, we develop the Task Manager – a lightweight web application based on AngularJS. Emergency responders can use this, in addition to an operational command system, to coordinate and monitor volunteers’ relief activities.