Call for Papers : Emergency Management in a Mobile World

A Special Session at the
MOBILE LIFE CONFERENCES and EXHIBITIONS

? mSOCIETY 2008  ? The 1st International Conference on Mobile Society
? EURO mGOV 2008 ? The  3rd  European Conference on Mobile Government

15 -19 September 2008, Sheraton Voyager, Antalya, Turkey
http://www.mgovernment.org/events/index.html     mlife@mgovernment.org

Chairs:
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Thomas Rose, and Gertraud Peinel
Head of research department, and project manager at the Fraunhofer FIT

The domain of emergency management is a specific part of the e- and mGovernment world. The preparation for emergency events ? caused by natural as well as man-made reasons ? has gained increasing attention from the research community due to the potential impact of such events.

In case of major disaster, radio and television might give first hints of what to do and what to avoid but this is rarely done in coordination with the local emergency managers. Therefore, further details for the specific region of interest as well as for the specific situation characteristics (including event information like occurrence place and time, estimated duration, subjects affected, possible conditions ? technical or other ? for its finalisation) are not available.

Goals of this special session are therefore to
-establish the realms of emergency management as a specific topic of interest at this conference.
- discuss socio-technical methodologies for the development and deployment of IT solutions for emergency management tasks with a particular account on mobile technologies, e.g. mobility of citizens as well as rescue teams.
- elaborate the impact of mobile technologies on the emergency management life-cycle.
- discuss the role and their potential contributions of business partners to emergencies: capacities for communication channels, information relay centres, ad hoc call centres, and business models.
- relate country-specific organisational and legal frameworks, e.g. cross border procedures.
- tie relationships among research on mGovernment and crisis management: detect common problems and solutions, identify needs of actions, and show how IT solutions and new business models can restructure also the way of emergency management.

Topics for Submission include but are not limited to
- Emergency Management in a Mobile World: challenges, barriers, and opportunities
- Business models, public private partnerships
-Characteristics of mobile emergency services (e.g., reach, costs, acceptance, complexity, side-effects)
- Best practices and lessons learnt
- Planning methodologies for emergency preparation

Expected audience: Authorities, risk experts, and e/mGovernment scientists

Submissions in the form of research papers (max 10 pages) and practice talks (max 1 page) are solicited via the conferences online submission system at the
http://www.mgovernment.org/confadmin/confadmin.php
Further information on submissions and all about  the conference can be found at
http://www.mgovernment.org/events/mgov2008/home.html

For all enquiries, please write to the session chairs: thomas.rose@fit.fraunhofer.de, gertraud.peinel@fit.fraunhofer.de or the conference secreteriat mlife@mgovernment.org