Granularity of the management levels in crisis context – GéNéPi

Reports on crisis management show the two following main observations:
Observation 1: The main weakness of crisis management is definitely not due to some lack in abilities and experience of actors involved in crisis management but to the difficulty to perform an agile coordination of these stakeholders. From this first statement, one can infer that (i) the coordination needs to be defined, (ii) the defined coordination schema needs to be executed and (iii) the executed coordination needs to be maintained.
Observation 2: The digital world is a reality and it will soon be required to be able to manage huge information flows emitted by crisis sites. From this second statement arise the need to support the continuous links between several abstraction levels of communication: (i) data gathering, (ii) interpreting of the gathered information and (iii) exploitation of the interpreted knowledge.
Both these observations may be aggregated in one single subject connecting coordination issue with the next uses of ICT:

• Defining the coordination requires a bottom-up vision (data gathering about the situation, formalization of information and exploitation of that knowledge to define a coordination schema).
• Executing the defined coordination requires a top-down vision (validation of the knowledge about the coordination schema, definition of the coordination information and transmission of data to orchestrate the coordination).
• Maintaining the coordination requires a bottom-up approach (data gathering about the evolving situation, interpretation of the gathered information and exploitation of that knowledge to adapt the coordination.

On a scientific and technological point of view, the GéNéPi project aims at defining, designing and deploying a Mediation Information System (MIS) dedicated to horizontal coordination (between “operational” stakeholders) and vertical driving (between “decisional” levels). Consequently, the GéNéPi is structured according to three layers:
• Business layer: knowledge gathering (regarding the crisis situation, stakeholders abilities, risks, doctrines) and exploitation of that knowledge to infer schemas for horizontal coordination and for hierarchized vertical decisions (as collaborative process models for crisis management).
• Technical layer: management of the collaborative processes (horizontal and vertical) defined at the business layer. The horizontal stake is mainly (i) to interface with software tools available among stakeholders and (ii) to provide human tasks with interfaces allowing to integrate the non-computerizable activities into the orchestration. The vertical stake is mainly to support the granularity of decision (by filtering and aggregating messages in the bottom-up way / distribute and disintegrate messages un the top-down way).
• Agility management layer: monitoring of the crisis situation (to maintain a clear vision of the real situation) and of the collaborative processes (to maintain a clear vision of the expected situation). By comparing both these visions, and analyzing their differences, it is possible to suggest adaptation measures. Through these mechanisms, the kinetics of the situation and the required adaptation are taken into account.

Finally, the GéNéPi project assembles ten partners (five as members of a steering committee) and aims at developing, through seven work-packages running during three years, a methodological approach and the associated experimental tools, experimented and validated on an iterative scenario of flood from the Loire River (mainly considering network resilience).