Agent-based integration of rescue systems for first responders

Routine operations of emergency first responders are usually well managed. The situation is different for mass casualty emergencies where more people and properties are threatened. In such situations there are no predefined plans in place and mitigation is solved mostly through crisis management. Teams managing such acute accidents are often working in information insufficiency. Timely information exchange between involved agencies, common understanding of data and fast provision of knowledge can save lives and protect properties. Useful information is heterogeneous and is distributed across many organizations in disparate information sources in many formats with different access policies and in varying quality. The information sources range from sensors deployed on incidence sites, publicly available data sources, corporate legacy systems, documents stored on remote locations to human end-users providing information using mobile devices. This article addresses operational challenges of First Responders and complementary challenges in accessing and analyzing information from multiple sources to provide advanced capabilities for command and control in emergency response. Herein we propose to use an agent-based infrastructure for supporting such interoperability. We propose to build the framework amplifying an agent infrastructure developed in scope of the SECRICOM EU integrated project. In this article we focus mainly on the conceptual architecture of such integration framework.