Towards Improving Information Systems Interoperability in Disaster Management

Abstract

Climate change-triggered catastrophic events appear to be steadily increasing in intensity and frequency. Proper preparation, response and recovery are essential in order to survive and manage disasters. Unfortunately, for historical, geographical and cultural reasons, the organisations responsible for delivering emergency response services often under-perform, with the lack of proper interop-eration and collaboration of their information systems being a main culprit. This paper analyses the interoperability issues specific to disaster management from an information systems perspective and proposes improvements based on the ad-vances in interoperability research and using an enterprise architecture perspective so as to provide a whole-system and sustainable solution.