Towards a better management of complex emergencies through crisis management meta-modelling

Managing complex emergency situations is a challenging task, mainly due to the heterogeneity of the partners involved and the critical nature of such events. Whatever approach is adopted to support this objective, one unavoidable issue is knowledge management. In the context of our research project, gathering, formalising and exploiting all the knowledge and information about a given crisis situation is a critical requirement. This paper presents some research results concerning this specific topic: from a theoretical point of view, the generic dimensions of crisis characterisation are defined, while from a technical point of view, we describe a software solution able to collect that knowledge (based on meta-models and ontologies). This is used to confront the characteristics of the situation (context) with characteristics of the resources (relief system) in order to design a suitable response. Finally, an illustrative example concerning a crash between a tanker truck and a train is described.