An Open Community Approach to Emergency Information Services during a Disaster

This paper discusses the application of open community for the emergency information services during a disaster with the lessons learned from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. An open community approach enables open participation for information collection and sharing. The suggested ldquodual modelrdquo allows a two-way-traffic from citizens to officials and from officials to citizens. The latest Web services based mashup technology can play a critical role in implementing an OC with the dual model in a cellphone network. This paper further addresses the issues of information sharing, security, and service quality for an open community.