Towards an Open Ontology for Emergency Response

Emergency Response and Relief Coordination Efforts are evolving to leverage the efficiencies offered by the internet in the area of real time communication among agents and stakeholders. There is widespread consensus both in the technical and ER community that to improve efficiency of response, information must be shared and web based protocols must be used [22]. In addition to known technical and non-technical obstacles that inhibit the effective and seamless coordination of operations, we identify issues that challenge the development of functional information and communication models. Recent studies in ontology engineering, and evidence from direct observations of open-source work groups in this field, point to the need for an easy to use 'open' conceptual and semantic framework, defined here broadly as ???Open Ontology??? (OOnt), and a corresponding design and implementation methodology that can be referenced unambiguously and universally by developers and users of information systems designed to support ER operations.