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Proceedings of the International Conference on \ 33
Advances and New Challenges in Earthquake
Engineering Research, Hong Kong Volume
DEVELOPMENT OF VIRTUAL EMERGENCY
RESPONSE NETWORK AND APPLICATION
Sunao Nishimura
AJBS Consulting, EQE Japan Division
Tokyo, Japan
INTRODUCTION
In a catastrophe earthquake, individuals, companies and organizations are required to respond to
protect themselves and minimize following risks, because full public assistance is not expected due to
simultaneous accidents in everywhere in impacted areas, and communication problems.
Various types of emergency information management platforms and systems have been developed with
enhanced information technology these days. Most of those products, however, works independently
apart from practical use, and enough attention is not paid to the integration of different functions with
proper assumptions on what is likely to occur and how personnel need to respond to varying situations.
We have developed an integrated emergency information management program for a complex area, the
Hammi Island Triton Square (HITS), in Tokyo, to protect facilities, employees, visitors and tenants'
businesses. The program includes a networked information system called Virtual Emergency
Response Network (VERN) and emergency response planning for optimized response organization.
The system attempts to encompass wide-ranging emergency information from earthquake intensity and
prompt damage assessment on/around the site, through response and recovery information
indispensable for proper decision-making procedure during a disaster. This paper describes concept
of the network and actual application to the HITS complex.
VIRTUAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE NETWORK: VERN
In order to make a community more self-sufficient during an earthquake disaster by expediting the
collection and processing of emergency information and providing it real-time and under various
formats to emergency managers, tenants, shoppers, visitors and employees, we developed a concept of
VERN which is defined as a virtual network where information gathers and responders discuss
situations to initiate prompt response operations. On this network, authorized responders
communicate and make decisions based on information that is placed by responders or that is
estimated and recommended by the system. Figure 1 shows overall structure of information which is
treated on the network, and associated response expected to be determined based on the information.