Re: Proposal for a domain

Hi all,

On 12/06/2007, at 15:14, paola.dimaio@gmail.com wrote:

> 1. please do add the useful links or resources that you point to on  
> the wiki -also  I remember you volunteering to start maintaining a  
> glossary  that we may as well want to use as a starting point for  
> further discussion.   In terms of architecture, a controlled  
> vocabulary is also going to be an essential artifact, I ll be happy  
> to maintain that in the future

Yes, that wiki is located here. I'm more than happy to give anyone in  
this group access to continue adding from other relevant documents to  
expand the terms to an international scale. I'm also more than happy  
to turn over ownership of the work done to date to this group if it  
will help us in terms of better defining the domain language.

<http://www.plan.net.nz/wiki/index.php/Main_Page>

I haven't worked on it in a few months, but it was spawned by the  
discussion on HICT about all the different words and their meanings.

There are 171 terms to date.

<http://www.plan.net.nz/wiki/index.php/Category:Terms>

Some of these terms have multiple definitions, and there are likely  
many more to follow. e.g.

<http://www.plan.net.nz/wiki/index.php/Category:Disaster>

There is also a simple structure in place to identify the types of  
source documents.

Geography
   * By Country
   * International/Multi-national such as the UN

Document Type
   * Guideline - for non-binding definitions
   * Legislation - for legally binding terms used in law and regulations

For example, currently as there are predominantly NZ definitions,  
most of these 'Legislation' terms are those that have meaning defined  
in law.

<http://www.plan.net.nz/wiki/index.php/Category:Legislation>

One concern I have is that many definitions will be contained in  
copyrighted documents and we may need to obtain permission to  
aggregate and re-use their work. I'm thinking particularly of the  
likes of existing standards organisations such as the US National  
Fire Protection Association that manages NFPA1600:2007 - Standard on  
Disaster/Emergency Management and Business Continuity Programs.

<http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/PDF/CodesStandards/1600-2007.pdf>

How does the W3C process support the use of definitions that fall  
under copyright. Copying a few terms may be OK, but I imagine that  
some standards organisations may balk if a whole glossary from a  
standard they manage is copied.

This is important as many of the domain users rely on definitions in  
these documents, which means that the XG must factor these  
definitions into our work.

> 2.  I am researching 'event classification' principles and have  
> elicited some comments from experts that I am posting on the wiki soon

And we will have to be careful that event classification principles  
are not seen to override any legislative definitions that countries  
may have in relation to legal definitions of emergency and disaster  
and the variance that we will see from country to country.

> Gavin, you have no reason to take offense. Corruption and systemic  
> malfunctions  simply need to be acknowledged (they exist).

> They are not caused by individual entities, but by bad 'system  
> design'.  Now that we are undertaking to lay the foundations for  
> future global, pervasive and open systems, have the duty to  
> acknowledge the built in flaws in the existing systems and try to  
> take corrective action I look forward to your help with that aspect  
> of the task

Actually, most corruption and systemic malfunction is usually endemic  
in the community concerned, yes it is systemic, but most of it falls  
outside of the DM domain - don't blame it on those responsible for DM/ 
EM. Corruption doesn't magically appear as soon as there is a  
disaster, rather it is just a continuation of corruption-as-normal  
within the community. E.g. those that have 'routine' power exercising  
their power during emergencies to their benefit.

The corollary of course is that we will only be able to correct some  
aspects of corruption and systemic malfunction in a community through  
our work. There will be some of these problems that we just won't be  
able to touch.

Cheers Gav

Received on Tuesday, 19 June 2007 10:47:51 UTC