Knowledge-centered design of decision support systems for emergency management

This paper focuses on the design of decision support systems for emergency managers in charge of planning, coordinating and controlling the actions carried out to respond to a critical situation. A novel knowledge-centered design methodology is proposed and demonstrated through the application in a concrete case study in the field of pandemic flu emergency management. Knowledge-centered design is based on a rational and structured approach to the elicitation and modeling of the knowledge concerning the target environment, the application domain, the intended users, their tasks, and the specific activities that the decision support system is expected to provide. Our proposal aims at overcoming some of the limitations of user-centered and activity-centered design in the specific context of decision support systems. Knowledge-centered design is based on an iterative process that goes through four main phases, namely: target environment identification, domain understanding, user characterization, and functional analysis. The paper illustrates each phase in detail and discusses the application in the proposed case study. ► Design of decision support systems for emergency management is discussed. ► A general design methodology based on a knowledge-centered approach is proposed. ► A large case study concerning pandemic flu emergency management is presented. ► A multifaceted approach to the evaluation of decision support systems is proposed.