Emergency-management situational-awareness prototype (EMSAP)

This paper describes the architecture and requirements of an integrated system that is needed to support command and control for the interoperability-capability focus area. The architecture is designed to enhance situational awareness during emergencies such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, wild fires, floods, tsunamis, mud slides, storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, extreme heat, extreme cold, massive disease outbreaks, wars, terror-ist attacks, power outages, cyber-attacks on utility grids and civil unrest. A net-centric approach that emphasizes cognitive aspects, such as cognitive-information operations, in decision support ensures information superiority by networking sensors and human-factors monitoring. This enables decision makers to achieve shared awareness. Linking knowledgeable entities effectively leads to in-creased speed of command and a higher tempo of operations with a degree of self-synchronization. The resulting system will decrease cognitive over-load and improve cognitive monitoring by providing a more systematic and less labor-intensive method to manage information from and for first res-ponders at the local, tribal, state, and federal levels.