Accident and Emergency Management. The Nordic Programme

There is an increasing potential for severe accidents as the industrial development tends towards large, centralised production units. In several industries this has led to the formation of large organisations which are prepared for accidents fighting and for emergency management. The functioning of these organisations critically depends upon efficient decision making and exchange of information. This project is aimed at securing and possibly improving the functionality and efficiency of the accident and emergency management by verifying, demonstrating, and validating the possible use of advanced information technology in the organisations mentioned above. With the nuclear industry in focus the project consists of five main activities:
1) The study and detailed analysis of accident and emergency scenarios based on records from incidents and drills in nuclear installations.
2) Development of a conceptual understanding of accident and emergency management with emphasis on distributed decision making, information flow, and control structures that are involved.
3) Development of a general experimental methodology for evaluating the effects of different kinds of decision aids and forms of organisation for emergency management systems with distributed decision making.
4) Development and test of a prototype system for a limited part of an accident and emergency organisation to demonstrate the Dotential use of computer and communication systems, data-base and knowledge base technology, and applications of expert systems and methods used in artificial intelligence.
5) Production of guidelines for the introduction of advanced information technology in the organisations baced on evaluation and validation of the prototype system.