m-Government: A framework of mobile-based emergency response systems

Mobile government (m-Government) is the next inevitable direction of evolution of e-Government. A mobile-based emergency response system (MERS) is one of the important m-Government services. A MERS under m-Government platform is a mobile-based information system designed to let people get help from the government in an emergency situation. It also makes the use of mobile technologies to assist the government to get information and make decisions in responding disasters anytime and anywhere. This paper presents a framework of MERS which has five main components (register, monitoring, analysis, decision support, and warning) aiming to provide a new function and service to m-Government. The proposed MERS framework would also offer a new opportunity to interact between government, citizens, responders, and other non-government agencies in emergency situations.