Assessing interoperability in emergency management standards

The terrorist attacks in September 2001 and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina have led to a reassessment of information management within the United States government. These disasters required an immediate and prolonged response from both the federal, state, and local governments at the point of concern and the numerous outlying areas which were providing resources to mitigate the event. The government realized the need for greater interoperability and information sharing for such response efforts. This policy shift is best exemplified by the efforts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to create emergency management standards. These standards are being developed through the joint efforts of DHS and the emergency management technical committee of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). This paper will identify the contributions these new standards will have on interoperability in emergency management and then provide a case study of one of them, the Emergency Data Exchange Language Distribution Element (EDXL-DE). This case study will show areas in EDXL-DE where additional specifications and standards are required or where intricate details of the underlying specification increase implementation costs. Through these lessons learned, the authors hope to provide a different perspective on specification creation which will be used to facilitate the adoption of the growing family of emergency management standards.