RE: Proposal for a domain

Dear Soenke,

First of all, I would like to introduce myself. I'm a PhD student working on the topic "Geo-information and formal semantic for disaster management", OTB, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.

I submitted to the mail-list of W3C Incubator Group and read your letter just now. You suggested we start by a specific domain or a sapmle crisis, which I fully agree. However, do you think in the future we will model different types of disaster? Or do you think it is better if we define different types of disaster by means of the management processes? Do you think if it is better if we abstract all the basic processes of managing a disaster. For instance, the process of traffice control, which is independent of any types of disaster --- it doesn't matter if the disaster is caused by hurricane, by an exploration or whatever (in the Netherlands, at the moment, the processes of managing disaster is well-studied and modeled).  I think it is difficult to define a certain type of disaster, because if we define the types of disaster, there are more things we need to think about, for instance, the damage levels of disasters, the people involved in the management work of disasters and ect.

It to me, how to model disaster management, remains unclear. But I do agree with you, we need to start by a specific domain and a sample.

Thank you for reading.

Kind Regards
Wei XU

-----Original Message-----
From: public-disaster-management-ont-request@w3.org [mailto:public-disaster-management-ont-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Soenke Ziesche
Sent: donderdag 7 juni 2007 12:40
To: public-disaster-management-ont@w3.org
Subject: Proposal for a domain


Dear all,

Since I'm joining this group slightly later I would like to briefly introduce myself: I have been working for the UN for several years in information management, currently  as the Head of the Resident Coordinator's office in Blue Nile State, Sudan. I am very interested in applying Semantic Web approaches to humanitarian information management and have published an article on xml.com in this regard:

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2006/12/13/semantic-wikis-and-disaster-relief-operations.html

I'm very keen on contributing to the Incubator Group. But since I haven't worked with the W3C before, I thought it's maybe better for me to get an overview first and to wait until specific tasks will be distributed.

However, one proposal I'd like to make at this stage: While, obviously, the deliverables of this project should be applicable to any kind of disaster, I still believe it would be a good idea to have a specific domain or sample crisis to work on and I'd like to suggest to take "influenza pandemic" as such an example for the following reasons: 1) This is an example for a complex and very large scale, potentially even global disaster, thus a good test for the robustness of a system. 2) As you probably know, there is indeed a risk of an upcoming "influenza pandemic", potentially caused by a mutation of the Avian Flu virus, and relevant departments of the UN are already working on the preparation for such a pandemic.

Looking much forward to cooperating with you.

Warm regards,
Soenke


Humanitarian Affairs Liaison Officer
Head of Resident Coordinator's Office
Damazine, Blue Nile State, Sudan

soenke.ziesche@undp.org
+249-9-12178326



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Received on Saturday, 9 June 2007 01:19:36 UTC