Message from the RISI 2011 Workshop Organizers

Abstract

Populations of cities will continue to increase: the share of the world’s population living in cities is predicted to rise from 50% in 2011 to 70% in 2050. Threats to cities and their social infrastructures from natural disasters, crime, terrorism, and so on endanger human life both directly and indirectly. Resilience is gaining recognition as an important concept in coping with potential threats. In general, resilience means having social infrastructures that can prevent or mitigate potential threats and that can support the delivery of regular services reliably and normally even if a threat does manifest itself. Information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure is a key component of social infrastructures and is thus a central object of resilience research. The provision and processing of real-time information is vital for communication, coordination, and cooperation, and, when a threat becomes reality, the ICT infrastructure must continue to play its role so that organizations can quickly recover and so that the responses to the catastrophe can be effectively managed. Since resilience research is still in its infancy, the main objective of this workshop, “Resilience and IT-Risk in Social Infrastructures (RISI 2011)”, within the Sixth International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security in Vienna, Austria, is to identify research problems and to discuss future research initiatives regarding IT support for “Resilience in Social Infrastructures.” An exacting double-blind review process has resulted in five submissions being accepted for presentation and publication. Kai Kittel et al. propose using techniques from business process management to make emergency processes more effective. Their focus is on the compliance challenges related to ICT that must be met if society is to accept powerful emergency institutions. Gerard Garlick addresses the usage of cloud computing at a community level to improve resilience and discusses several security problems related to the deployment of cloud computing. Sebastian Schrittwieser et al. focus on further disclosure of anonymized personal data after their provision to third parties, e.g. to emergency response teams. Their approach is to make unique fingerprints of personal data by using anonymization patterns. Konrad Meier et al. propose using a test bed for simulating the high-load scenarios of mobile phone networks typical of catastrophic events and discuss potential countermeasures to this problem. Tomoko Kajiyama describes a new method for identifying and visualizing risks by using example web sites. Her approach could improve the visualization of risk scenarios and their assessment when external ICT services have to be integrated in an ad hoc manner to ensure that ICT services are available to the affected domains of the social infrastructures. We thank the reviewers for contributing to the high quality of the RISI 2011 workshop with their constructive and thorough reviews. Unfortunately, during the organization and preparation of this workshop—an unexpected natural disaster with terrible consequences struck on March 11—the Great East Japan Earthquake. We convey our deepest condolences to the survivors and to the families that lost loved ones. We hope, and expect, that Japan will come back from this catastrophe stronger than ever.