Abstract:

In disaster management, one of the common problems is insufficient cooperation among first responders. This paper proposes a research to design a step-wise policy-driven process to realize awareness among cooperative responders using software agents. Software agents can be used to inform cooperative roles of an appropriate course of action. Policies, which are refined to be aware of behaviors, can be realized in software agents using a rule based transition function. The proposed research can fill a gap in current research and practice by providing a translation method between sense of experience, policy specification and awareness of software agent behaviors. As policies are technology independent, the proposed method offers possibilities for better intra-governmental agency collaboration during an emergency response.