SECTOR: Secure Common Information Space for the Interoperability of First Responders

The ever-growing human, economic and environmental losses due to natural and/or man-made disasters demand a systematic, holistic, inter-governmental and multi-disciplinary approach to the management of large-scale crisis. However, crisis management is usually coordinated by local authorities, supported by a variety of different national and international crisis management organizations, all acting relatively autonomously. Coordination actions usually adopt non-interoperable information management tools, due to the heterogeneity of the involved organizations, limiting or even hindering the coordination efforts. This paper introduces the efforts conducted in the context of the EU-funded project called SECTOR, which aims at establishing the foundations of future Collaborative Crisis Management (CCM) Information Spaces by expanding the European scientific knowledge base on (cross-border) multi-agency processes and their complications when setting-up and designing the enabling information systems.