Multi-agent architecture for integrating remote databases and expert sources with situational awareness tools humanitarian operations scenario

Abstract

Complex Humanitarian Emergencies are usually military conducted activities where participants must be able to react to a very dynamic and unfriendly environment. National and international participating forces require cooperation and coordination between civilian and military entities. The continuous need to share huge amounts of information requires a technological framework to allow legacy and new hardware and software interconnection, rapid network installation and flexible bandwidth availability. To improve the speed and the quality of the decision-making a scientific approach must be applied to the process. Maximizing both the effectiveness and efficiency in decision-making can be obtained by developing decision support systems capable of providing access to existing databases and expert systems. Databases usually contain raw information available for retrieval and processing according to the needs of the decision makers. Expert systems embed human expertise and allow the propagation of scarce expert resources throughout an organization to increase the consistency and quality of the decisions. Sharing access to these types of information within a Complex Humanitarian Emergency environment provides for better situational awareness and improves the decision-making process. This thesis will gather and combine the information from different sources and will suggest a model for integrating remote databases and expert sources with situational awareness tools.