Spatial-aware iterative integration of crisis management information systems

Information systems are playing increasingly more important role in modern crisis management process. An integrated system with capabilities like foresight, prediction and decision support capabilities can provide substantial added value for decision makers on both tactical and policy-making levels. It is however a challenging task to seamlessly integrate various systems with dedicated functionalities on functional and technical aspects, especially when these systems are developed independently from each other with substantially different design rationale and software technology. In this paper, an iterative system integration approach is proposed by harmonising service oriented, model-driven and agile system development. Several design principles and best practices from the software engineering community are adopted to facilitate the integration task. In addition, extra attention is paid to provide enhanced support for integrating spatial data into the crisis management workflow. This approach aims to provide a pragmatic system integration methodology to integrate crisis management information systems in a more effective and efficient fashion.