Dynamic decision support for managing regional resources: Mapping risk in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

To build resilience, communities must redesign standard practices in emergency management training and operations such that stakeholders share a common view of community risks and resources. A shared image of community risks and resources can facilitate engagement of organizations across sectors and jurisdictions in collective action to reduce shared regional risks. Moreover, creating a reliable, trusted knowledge commons or shared knowledge base for information search, exchange, and updating can support cognition and communication among participating actors, a critical task in achieving effective collective action, especially in urgent, complex, and evolving emergency systems and situations. In this article, we present the initial stage of a prototype decision support system for emergency operations in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. This prototype represents the first step in building a shared knowledge based to support community resilience in multi-jurisdictional regional system. Vetted and endorsed by experienced practicing emergency managers in the county, the prototype system uses geospatial modeling to map resource allocation scenarios in relation to various types of risk in the region. By providing a trusted knowledge base of regional risks and resources, the prototype system can support emergency managers in developing an integrated perspective on shared regional risks and in collectively exploring, assessing, and improving the efficaciousness of coordinated inter-organizational and inter-jurisdictional resource allocation strategies in virtual emergency response and readiness scenarios. Dynamic functions are proposed for future development.