Secure crisis information sharing through an interoperability framework among first responders: The SECTOR practical experience

The increasing occurrence of large scale disasters calls out for a collaborative approach to crisis management, where multiple and heterogeneous organizations of first responders are deployed within the damaged area and must interact with each others in order to cooperate in the damage assessment and recovery actions. Such an approach requires a suitable communication platform to allow these organizations to exchange crisis information among their members, despite their heterogeneity. Current research is investigating such point and several solutions have been proposed; however, there are other key requirements that such a platform needs to address in order to be successfully used in practical cases. Among these requirements, security plays a key role. This paper introduces the issue of confidential and private communications for platforms supporting collaborative crisis management, and identifies a possible solution developed within the context of the EU-funded project named SECTOR.