Collaborative disaster management: An interdisciplinary approach

• We outline the current issues in disaster management collaboration and propose a multidisciplinary approach to address them.
• We describe the potential contribution of interoperability, collaborative networks and enterprise architecture to support the argument.
• We exemplify the application of the multidisciplinary approach to a potential disaster management scenario.

Large scale natural and man-made catastrophic events, triggered or augmented by regional conflicts, climate change and new disease strains appear to be steadily increasing in intensity and frequency. Proper preparation, response and recovery are required in order to cope with and survive large-scale disasters; unfortunately however, the institutions responsible for delivering emergency response services form a heterogeneous set that often under-performs due to lack of proper interoperation and collaboration. New innovative, holistic and integrated models, representing all essential aspects of the disaster events and response team participants are necessary to successfully meet these new challenges. Based on previous research and applications, this paper argues that the necessary artefacts can be built using an interdisciplinary, industry-based paradigm enabled by advances in the Interoperability, Collaborative Networks and Enterprise Architecture disciplines. This combined approach aims to provide a sound platform for efficient disaster response delivered by agile and synergic task force teams.