RE: Raising some points of concern

Hi all,

As an early participant in this process and seemingly one of the few actual
domain representatives here, I feel it appropriate to support Gavins
concerns. The reason I have not contributed lately is I am likewise
disillusioned and feel this initiative has lost direction and focus -
particularly with respect to the originally stated objectives/deliverables
(repeated below for clarity).

1 - A current state-of-the-art of vocabularies used in the crisis/
disaster/emergency/resilience sector.
2 - Towards an interoperability framework for the crisis/disaster/
emergency/resilience sector

It would appear the very well defined, accepted and adopted vocabularies of
our domain are now deemed insufficient for some members of this group, who
instead seemingly prefer to invent terms of reference - i.e. Why do you wish
to rename the globally accepted term "Disaster Management" to something
else? Also: "we need to review terms one by one, and adopt them as proposed
by existing resources, or amend them for w3 adoption" -and- "since the
ontology is meant to enable a very different type of emergency response than
has been practiced previously". With all due respect, this group has nowhere
near the expertise, authority, or credibility to 'review or amend' the
language of the disaster management domain or to advise on best practice
emergency response. Who here has managed a large scale disaster response
effort? It is unreasonable to expect the disaster management community to
accept recommendations unless we at least appear to acknowledge the
expertise within the domain.   

My hope is ego's will be put aside and this process will produce the stated
deliverables - however I am not confident this will occur - nonetheless
offer support if we can manage to refocus efforts.

Rgds, Don Cameron

Received on Saturday, 23 June 2007 08:28:37 UTC