Governance of Geo-information in Emergency Response

Abstract

Geographic Information (GI) is a proven tool to support sense and decision making for effective coordination within emergency response. The objective of this research is to capture and evaluate the use, communication, and exchange of GI between the operational and tactical levels of the emergency services within the Netherlands, in order to identify factors that may impede or facilitate GI sharing. Because of the unpredictable nature of disaster events and emergency response, diverse datasets are required for risk and impact assessment. Several technical and non-technical issues have been highlighted from literature that effect the flow of information, however, a methodology to identify between which core components of the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) and the work processes associated with the effecting factors is absent from literature. Interviews were conducted to with key actors in the emergency management infrastructure (between the operational and tactical levels) to assess the socially constructed reality of GI sharing and coordination. The goal of the research is to offer an evaluation method that utilises the principles of the Viable System Model (VSM) in order to propose definitive boundaries within a SDI network, to assess network integrity of all the involved partners. A SDI Network Maturity Model was constructed based on SDI maturity and I.T. alignment in order to highlight the current state of the SDI network, and to provide a roadmap towards the activities that need to be further developed. The results of this research explore SDI governance and alignment with the encompassing Information Infrastructure (II), so that Emergency Managers have access to reliable and harmonised data to make informed decisions, and end-users have influence within their SDI network.