Improving Emergency Response Systems Through the Use of Intelligent Information Systems

Abstract

The shifts experienced in the environment of disaster operations and emergency response are reshaping the context of information acquisition and utilization in hospitals. In addition to the formulation of emergency response plans, healthcare organizations (especially hospitals) are being challenged by the growing need to maintain and share real time information necessary for the improvement of emergency response processes. Such information-related attention originates from many emergency-specific concerns including the limited focus of current emergency response information systems, decision limitations that challenge the formulation of decision support applications and the characterization of user requirements, the heterogeneity of emergency response information and the difficulty of integrating spatially distributed information sources. The increased attention in emergency response information also emerges from the recent technological developments (in terms of hardware, software functionalities, databases and telecommunication, among others) which significantly affected the processing, storage and retrieval of real time information. This paper focuses on the examination of the context of emergency response in Al Ahsaa area of Saudi Arabia and the applicability of multi-agent information systems through the proposal of an integrated architecture. Then it sheds light on the implementation concerns to ensure the contribution of the proposed architecture towards the engagement of stakeholders, the improvement of the availability and accessibility of emergency management information and the harmonization of emergency response operations. .