Business Process Support for Emergency Management

Measures, tasks and procedures are pivotal elements of any rescue and relief operation in case of emergencies. Hence, process management appears certainly as attractive candidate for rescue and relief organizations by nature. Design, modelling, and assessment of emergency management processes may build upon concepts well established for business process management. Yet, the question arises whether emergency management processes differ from processes in business or software engineering. In this paper, we report on our experiences on transferring process management concepts and tools to emergency planning. It discusses whether rescue and relief organisations can capitalize on off-the-shelf business process management tools to prepare for disasters more effectively, and whether concepts of process modelling can be applied directly to standard operating procedures and vice versa. This paper will demonstrate why conventional business process means are inapplicable as planning tool in this domain. Smart checklists might be better suited both for the planning and during response phases of emergency episodes. Essentially, business process and emergency management often differ in their underlying governance.