Re: [humanitarian-ict] RE: EM Standards List

rural.life wrote:
> This ability for disaster managers to work together even across
> international boundaries with little or no advance warning is paramount to
> effective disaster mitigation.

I believe this is very important. Large scale disasters do not stick to 
demographic boundaries as we have found with Tsunami's and Earthquakes 
and we need to progress in this direction.

> While it's important to recognise the contributions of groups like Oasis and
> OGC etc, it's vitally important to consider the influence of these to the
> real-world practice of emergency management. Nothing becomes a standard
> without sector buy-in, and I think we really need to consider weighting
> various standards in accord with recognition and practice.

Agreed. Probably next to our cataloging of standards can be a indicator 
of current acceptance by various groups and regions. This can give us a 
gage on the pervasiveness and influence of such standards. This itself 
would be a valuable exercise and input when building/improving EM systems.

> My question to this group - how do we incorporate all the practiced,
> recognised, accredited proprietary EM standards into this initiative? -
> Should we be approaching FEMA, EMA, JICA, CFA, MCDEM, IAAI etc. for
> permission to interrogate and use their EM standards, languages and systems?
> If so who will undertake this task?

I believe the main goal is first to identify and classify this wide 
range of standards available out there, especially so we do not reinvent 
the wheel. Being part of Sahana, my motive is to know (hopefully in a 
quantitative manner) what standards the Sahana project should bank on 
moving forward, that would have the most impact.

> PS - I'm not sure who started cross-posting this thread to the
> humanitarian-ict list, however do we wish to continue or should discussions
> be kept to the w3.org list?

I apologize for that, as the first cross-post was my fault. Some people 
had complained that they had issues registering for the W3C mailing list 
at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-eiif/ . Please let 
Renato know if you are having any issues (the best would be to send a 
brief intro as you join to double check).

I will not cross-post again, but possible a few of us can take it on to 
post summaries of each discussion for review as the input from both 
forums can be valuable for this topic.

chamindra
http://chamindra.googlepages.com

Received on Tuesday, 26 February 2008 05:30:43 UTC