Abstract
The management of crises triggered by natural or manmade events requires a concerted effort of various actors crossing institutional and geographic boundaries. Technological advances allow to make crisis management more effective, but innovation is hindered by dispersed and often disconnected knowledge on the lessons learned, gaps, and solutions. Taxonomies enable the search for information of potential interest. This article presents a taxonomy of crisis management functions, designed on the basis of a conceptual model integrating the concepts of hazard, vulnerability, risk, and community, and the main consequence- and management-based concepts. At its highest level, the taxonomy includes ten functional areas: preparatory (mitigation, capability development, and strategic adaptiveness), operational (protection, response, and recovery), and common (crisis communications and information management; command, control, and coordination; logistics; and security management). The taxonomy facilitates the navigation of online platforms and the matching of needs and solutions. It has broader applications, e.g., for structuring the assessment of the societal impact of crisis management solutions and as a framework for a comprehensive assessment of disaster risk reduction measures. While the taxonomy was developed within a research and innovation project supported by the European Union, it reflects and is compatible with established international concepts and classification schemes, and is thus applicable by a wider international community.
Highlights
Interrelated consequences of human activities have led to a steady rise in the exposure to and impact of natural and manmade disasters [1]
Along with disaster risk reduction and resilience measures, the European Commission declared the development of comprehensive disaster preparedness for effective response and recovery, i.e., crisis management, capabilities as one of the principal priorities of the European Union [3]
While the traditional focus on crises triggered by natural disasters and industrial catastrophes, and the capacity to respond and recover remains valid, policymakers and researchers are becoming more concerned with crises triggered by terrorist acts [4], cyberattacks [5], interdependencies among critical infrastructures and cascading effects [6], and look into a more comprehensive approach to disaster risk reduction [7,8,9] and the need to adapt to climate change [10,11,12]
Summary
Interrelated consequences of human activities have led to a steady rise in the exposure to and impact of natural and manmade disasters [1]. DRIVER+ developed methodological, technical and information infrastructure, including a trial guidance methodology, a pan-European testbed infrastructure (physical, methodological and technical infrastructure elements allowing to conduct trials and evaluate crisis management solutions within an appropriate environment in a systematic way [15]), and an online platform known as “Portfolio of Solutions” (POS). Facilitating professional communications and information sharing among various crisis management stakeholders, between and within specialised organisations, trainers, research communities, industry, software producers, and other actors, as well as throughout the European community and citizens for strengthening disaster response volunteerism and resilience;. The CM taxonomy uses five classes of hazards and six properties of the concept of ‘community’ [16] It has a hierarchical structure with ten functional areas, 54 functions, 262 sub-functions, and 103 tasks in its current version The current version of the taxonomy is included as a supplement to this article
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