Developing High-Value Technologies for First Responders

The diverse nature of disaster management crises and the need for solutions that must consider many types of stakeholders should drive the way that disaster management technologies are developed. Many of these technologies will involve software applications for mobile devices. This research identifies a means of streamlining the requirements engineering process, thereby improving requirements efficiency and accuracy for emergency response applications. The research also identifies an essential new dimension for the software engineering methodology decision-making "home ground"graph introduced by Barry Boehm and Richard Turner, a dimension that raises the visibility of the diversity of stakeholders in emergency response communications and information products and services and, thus, improves methodology optimization. The research has been part of a prototype-development project that will be used for field testing of the IncidentAid, P.B.C. initial emergency response communications and information-sharing offering.