The Intelligent City Operations Centre: An Integrated Platform for Crisis Management

Emergency and disaster management – collectively referred to here as crisis management – have traditionally been practised as distinct and separate disciplines. In recent years, however, it has been recognised that crisis management is a complex, multi-disciplinary problem that requires continuous collaboration among all stakeholders in order to be effective. At the same time, technologies have emerged that can support cross-disciplinary approaches to crisis management. This paper describes the essential components of the ‘city crisis management problem’, and then maps the people, process and technology requirements that emerge from this problem description. The intent is to identify the critical success factors by establishing clear linkages between the problem requirements, the solution space and crisis management best practices. The paper also describes an embodiment of the Intelligent City Operations Centre concept, an ICT platform that can be specifically configured to address these requirements in developing countries.