The document describes an emergency response demonstration that uses semantic web technologies to help coordinate emergency services. The demonstration involves a cargo plane crashing in London, causing multiple fires. It shows how an emergency response system could help the Joint Emergency Services Control Centre make sense of the emergency, handle information requests, and make tactical decisions by integrating technologies like ontology mapping, image retrieval, and data management. The goal is to effectively acquire, analyze, and use information in real-time during an emergency response.

1. The AKT e-Response IFD Emergency response requires the effective and timely acquisition, analysis and use of information, which are also the goals of the Semantic Web community. The AKT e ­ Response Integrated Feasibility Demonstration shows the role AKT tools and techniques can play in this task. The demonstration is based around the scenario of a cargo plane disintegrating over the City of London, scattering fuel and debris over a wide area, and causing multiple fires to break out. This is a major emergency, requiring the coordination of all available emergency services. The JESCC, the Joint Emergency Services Control Centre, has convened at a safe location. This is the body responsible for coordinating the tactical response to a major emergency in London. London street map © Collins Bartholomew Ltd; used with permission. The AKT e ­ Response IFD is a prototype support system intended to help the JESCC to: make sense of the emergency and the response to it; handle requests for information, and; make and then enact operational and tactical decisions. This system builds upon earlier AKT IFDs to integrate a range of complementary AKT technologies through a sense-making interface layered on an agent-based semantic web infrastructure. The AKT e ­ Response IFD shows the relevance of advanced knowledge technologies – and, more generally, of the Semantic Web – to complex real world tasks. sense making activity performing decision supporting expert finding term mapping image retrieving photo managing resource mining Joint Emergency Services Control Centre Central-Ambulance-Control Fire-Brigade-CSC Police-CCC-IR Central Communications Complex-Information Room Command Support Centre public media government requests, reports decisions, advice, information domain experts decisions, advice CMS (Abdn) resource management sense making Compendium (OU) photo management Photocopain (Sheff/Soton) Armadillo (Sheff) resource mining Ontologies 3Store (Soton) data management expertise identification OntoCoPi (Soton) I-X (Edin) active agent framework image annotation AKTive Media (Sheff) term mapping CROSI (Soton) Key to lines infrastructure information acquisition information analysis decision-making & enactment requests, reports JESCC