Knowledge Management by Reusing Experience

The paper presents a study of the use of past experience in emergency management with an application to Forest Fire-Fighting Management. Our objective is the sharing of experience between the emergency managers in order to support the re-planning task, regarded as the relevant task of Forest Fire-Fighting Management. Therefore it is necessary to establish a common working language to facilitate sharing. First, we present the methodology used to determine the key element of this language, which is called a unit of experience. We then introduce a method to capitalize such units. Next, we describe the utilization of units of experience to improve emergency management. The reasoning method provides several levels of support to fire managers.