P-CARD: Policy-based Contextual Awareness Realization for Disasters

In an emergency response to a disaster, cooperation, upon which first responders rely to maintain contextual awareness, may not be adequate. This paper addresses how to maintain contextual awareness and extend cooperation among first responders in a disaster. Much research proposes that software agents can be used to aid in maintaining contextual awareness when direct cooperation is not available. However, the process of contextual awareness realization, a critical aspect to use software agents, has largely been ignored. This paper thus proposes a four-step process for contextual awareness realization driven by policies. The process is demonstrated via application to a scenario based on the hazardous material rail incident in Casa Grande, AZ. The paper concludes that refinement of management issues to policies, and then transforming policy to rules to define software agent behaviors is a potentially effective method for contextual awareness realization in software agents. This method enhances cooperation among involved agencies. © 2010 IEEE