Charter for a Proposed W3C Incubator Group

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Charter For a Proposed W3C Incubator Group (XG)

This page is for capturing ideas for the content of a proposed Charter to start a new W3C Incubator Group.

W3C Sponsors

We need at least three W3C Members to sponsor the XG - Confirmed so far are:

  • National ICT Australia (NICTA) - also proposed XG Chair
  • Google

The Charter needs to decide on the following:

Name (reflects Mission and Scope)

The name of the XG - Options include:

  • Emergency Management Vocabulary and Interop-Standards
  • Web standards for Global Risk Management
  • Emergency, Resilience and Relief Incubator Group

Introduction

Information systems (IT) can have a tremendous value to help manage the scale of humanitarian operations, especially if they are well integrated with person-to-person communication systems (ITC). However when a disaster strikes the various specialized information systems that appear with relief efforts are often themselves silo-ed and not built to share information with each other. Each group of experts, trained to use the systems they have, uses a slightly different terminology to discuss problems and request help or resources. It is even harder to establish any integration with, or supply or support, local resilient networks that continue to operate through and after the crisis. There's also no simple path to pass off control of relief-oriented systems to locals who will continue to use them (or very similar systems) during long-term reconstruction. This lack of data integration and lack of task-by-task integrativity greatly reduces the overall potential of using IT holistically to solve the many coordination, escalation and succession problems. For instance, missing data is rarely recognized in advance of a decision that requires it, when it may be impossible to gather it - leading to much guessing.

To solve this technically (first) crisis-focused systems need to agree on a common language (ontology) and define data gathering and sharing standards. This will then permit each system to have a more overarching (and/or redundantly-verified) view of the disaster based on data collected from other parallel repositories using the same standard tests and stored in the same way. Each tool can then more effectively guide responders to where they are most needed.

If successful at mapping the difficult resource and infrastructure problems of a disaster relief situation where local resilience has been compromised, the same ontology would then have to integrate with standards for local gov't and resilience networks, which serve the long term needs of their communities. For example, the UN ICLEI Resilient Communities and Cities initiative which has the support of EMI, UNDP, UN/ISDR. Early attention to the basic distinctions made in these standards will aid compatibility of the relief-focused short-term systems with resilience-focused long term systems.

Such compatibility and integration becomes more important as "more severe and extreme weather events necessitate urgent action to ensure adequate mitigation and adaptation measures be taken to protect public health, strengthen infrastructure, apply appropriate urban and regional development plans, and advance economic development." 4th World Mayors and Municipal Leaders Summit Declaration

Mission

  • To design a semantic and conceptual framework and related artifact aimed to support the robust and transparent implementation of emergency management systems, including open source software.
  • To create a collaborative, inclusive, participatory emergency management framework that takes into account human rights and social equality, aimed to support EM systems designed to optimize the use of available resources though the maximization of data, information, knowledge and resources exchange
  • To develop and publish an architecture of reference for humanitarian software designed to embed and support principles of ethics and transparency. with the aim to discourage profiteering and personal and/or corporate financial gain from humanitarian operations
  • Permit crisis and emergency management information and communication systems to inter-operate through common ontologies and standards for the benefit of enhanced collaboration, efficiency in crisis/emergency response, and long term local resilience.
  • Integrate relief and resilience systems and perspectives to facilitate easy relief of overwhelmed local capacity, and an eventual handover to local control after the crisis has (mostly) passed.

The Action Plan

- Invite friends and interested parties to take part in the effort - Identify stakeholders ('the people', agencies, governments, the internet and who else?) - Agree on Mission statement and Charter - Define priorities, targets, goals, schedules - Define tasks/deliverables

Scope

Some crisis and emergency management areas to be discussed:

  • How to ensure transparency and minimize corruption in Global Humanitarian Aid
  • Missing People / Victims / Displaced People / Evacuees
  • Relief Organizations ( "Who is doing what where?", escalation and deferral between organizations )
  • Resilience Networks ( local services and groups performing crisis functions to supply and support )
  • Situation awareness (location of camps, incidents, affected areas, hazards, unknown/confusing situations, requests for help...)
  • Assessment (of destruction and needs, resilience of still-functioning local infrastructure / institutions / services / persons )
  • Relief Logistics (Aid/resource classifications, supply chains, transport, storage, substitutions and temporary/makeshifts)
  • Alerts (e.g. CAPS)

Proposed Deliverables

  • Top level domain definition (vocabulary, entities, boundaries for global emergency management)
  • Sub-domain definitions (categorize types of emergencies, vocabularies, define entities and behaviors)
  • Define data types and data exchange protocols for main emergencies
  • Directory of crisis, local resilience and emergency management ontologies
  • Common crisis ontology and data dictionary focusing on rapid restorations
  • Directory of crisis, resilience and emergency management interop standards
  • Best practices in the application of resilience and crisis interop standards
  • Scenarios describing near-best, near-worst and other use cases of dictionary

Resources

[1]

[2]

Questions

  • Is restoring of pre-crisis local resilience a priority at all?
  • If local resilience and non-local relief systems often pass off responsibility to each other, should they not seek a single common resilience vocabulary from the beginning?
  • Are relief and resilience of equal concern in "managing" a crisis?
  • What role do relief agencies play in supplying and supporting locals?
  • Aside from short-term supply responsibilities what role will a disaster relief focused organization play in improving long-term local resilience?
  • To what degree is training in resilience integrated into relief?
  • How do relief agencies share what they learn about local resilience systems and use this to improve future versions of the deliverables as noted above?
  • How does ubiquity of mobile phones. GPS and local radio aid in disaster relief? What trends in communication should or must be anticipated in the ontology?

Dependencies

  • W3C Geospatial incubator [3]
  • W3C Mobile Web Initiative [4]
  • other W3C activities (possibly Internationalization, Multimodal Interaction, Quality Assurance, Privacy, Security, Semantic Web,

Synchronized Multimedia, Ubiquitous Web Applications and Voice Browser)

  • UN ICLEI, UN/ISDR, EMI, ProVention, UN-HABITAT Resilient Communities and Cities initiative
  • Wireless communication and data integration standards (IP on mesh networks, 802.15.4 6LowPAN, wireless USB, Bluetooth, 2.4 and 5.8 GHz cordless, G3, WiMax, 802.3.11a and 802.3.11b, etc.)
  • Wired data/DC plug and cable standards (at least USB, 802.3af and 24/48 VDC)

Participation

Decide workgroup, schedules, communiation protocols and procedures