Integrated community emergency management and awareness system: A knowledge management system for disaster support

•We examined situational quality as success factor of KMS for Emergency Management.•Simulated test revealed significant time saving with iCEMAS for disaster response.•128 Emergency managers perceived positively to all KMS-EM success factors.•58% of Emergency managers evaluated iCEMAS as 'Excellent' during system evaluation.•System usability score of 70.3 was achieved.

The initial start of this paper deals with reviewing the literature on Emergency Management Information Systems (EMIS) and integrating it into a Knowledge Management System (KMS) structures. This leads to the ability to take information seeking tasks in Emergency Management and translate it to a path in Knowledge Management Structure. This was used to develop an ability to compare current time requirements for information via current data-bases and phones with the performance of an integrated Knowledge Management System in 128 emergency managers of the Government of Malaysia via multi-method strategy including survey, interviews and simulation tests. This led to the recognition of the potential of such a system for the country and the initial parameters of a prototype of the first implemented system design. The resulting integrated Community Emergency Management and Awareness Systems (iCEMAS) is a prototype KMS that was developed and tested. This paper seeks to emphasize that a KMS for emergency management must incorporate features that enable role changes and allow people to access changes based on the situational requirement. The paper provides a highly concise overview and results that supplements our systematic review of KMS in Emergency Management in 2013.

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