1 COORDINATING URBAN INCIDENT MANAGEMENT & RECONSTRUCTION USING SOCIAL WEB

The enormous widespread and relative maturity of collaborative and social applications in Web 2.0 has encouraged metropolitans worldwide to incorporate them into their emergency management systems (Allen, 2010). This paper describes SWIMS (Semantic Web Based Incident Management System), a system that integrates Web 2.0 collaborative/social applications with software agent technologies in an aim to enhance emergency management practices in urban settings. The aim is to integrate information and work flows between responding agencies including contractors who will handle any collapsed structure or embedded access, medical staff, fire fighters and police. Interoperability between these diversified stakeholders is achieved through an ontology. Communication between these parties is achieved through web-based GIS system with social web features (annotation, tagging, etc.) The system utilizes software agents as an interface between various Web 2.0 collaboration systems and SWIMS. This also helps to overcome any syntax and/or schematic heterogeneity between SWIMS and collaborative applications data structures. The roles of software agents in response resources allocation and management as well as coordination of relief efforts and decision updates are also discussed. The experiences in developing and implementing this project are thoroughly discussed and analyzed in this paper