ResponSphere

PIs: Magda El Zarki

Co-PIs: Sharad Mehrotra, Ramesh Rao, Nalini Venkatasubramanian

Related People: Chris Davison, Steve Ponting, Carter Butts, Lichun Bao, J. Paul Dourish, Ron Eguchi, Charles Huyck, Kane Kim, Donald F. Kimball, Cristina Lopes, Aditi Majumder, Douglas Palmer, Padhraic Smyth, Tatsuya Suda, Gene Tsudik

Sponsors: Canon, ImageCat, Inc.

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Responsphere is an IT infrastructure test-bed that incorporates a multidisciplinary approach to emergency response drawing from academia, government, and private enterprise. The IT infrastructure can facilitate rapid and seamless access to and dissemination of information. Timely and effective response to natural or man-made disasters can reduce deaths and injuries, contain or prevent secondary disasters, and reduce the resulting economic losses and social disruption. During a crisis, responding organizations confront grave uncertainties in making critical decisions. There is a strong correlation between the quality of these decisions and the accuracy, timeliness, and reliability of the situational information (e.g., state of the civil, transportation and information infrastructures) and the availability of resources (e.g., medical facilities, rescue and law enforcement units) to the decision-makers.