W3UMLModel

WHO

Organizations represent any local/national/international, government/non-government organizations or local agencies and offices such as local churches. Organizations normally present a set of capabilities. In an emergency, they provide services based on their capabilities and current emergency needs, and in return they may need services from other organizations or people. They normally assign a person as a point of contact to each service. The organizations have general contact and location information as well.

• Organization properties: Type, Website
• Relationship with: Organization, Contact_Details, Affliated_Person, Party

Persons represents the individuals (Affliated_Person) who are affiliated with the organizations involved in an emergency, volunteers (Unaffiliated_Person), or the ones affected by the emergency (Affected_Person) who are the primary beneficiaries of emergency services. Person, similar to an organization, provides a set of capabilities or needs. An Affected_Person may need emergency services and an Unaffiliated_Person may be the one who volunteers to provide such services or to be available as a resource to other organizations which provide services to Affected_Person or Affected_Group.

• Person properties: Birth_Date
• Relationship with: Contact_Details, Party, Resource

Party is a general concept representing Organization and Person.

• Party properties: Name, Status (available/unavailable)
• Relationship with: Organization, Person, Capability, Service, Location_Information

Contact_Details may represent general contact information for an organization or specific information for a contact person in that organization. It may represent contact information for any person involved in, or affected by, an emergency as well. Contact_Details can be published or private and each may have different access strategies for various locations of the object.

• Contact_Details properties: Phone, Fax, Email, Radio (in radio communication, it could be information such as CallSign), Language (an option of different language), Status (valid, invalid)
• Relationship with: Location_Information

Unaffiliated_Person represents any person that is not related to an Organization.

• Unaffiliated_Person properties: Identification (anything that uniquely identifies the person), Certification (for volunteers, for example, who provide medical services)

WHAT

Capability represents a set of activities that a person or an organization can potentially undertake (represented by Working_Sector) or the resources they can provide (represented by Resource). For example, organization X may potentially be able to provide medical services plus 3 ambulances and 5 shelters. Resources can be Equipment (vehicles, communication facilities, etc.), People (human force), Fund (any financial support), or Supplies. Resources can have Location_Information for tracing purpose in emergency operations. Service is a set of activities that is carried out by an organization or a person. An example for a service could be a humanitarian project that is to improve education facilities in a given jurisdiction, or medical care that a volunteered physician provides to the victims of an earthquake. Services use the available capabilities to respond to an emergency. Location_Information represents the location where the service takes place.

• Service properties: Title, Description (objective), Date (Start/End date of the operation), Status (active/operational/suspended)
• Relationship with: Location_Information, Capability, Emergency

Emergency represents the actual incident that is being coordinated. Emergencies can happen unexpectedly, such as an earthquake, or can be the result of significant vulnerabilities in the society such as HIV/AIDS. The services address the needs in different phases of an emergency. Location_Information represents the location where the emergency takes place. Related Emergencies should also be linked to enable shared resources and improved lessons-learnt outcomes

• Emergency properties: Name, Type, phase (mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery)
• Relationship with: Organization, Person, Location_Information

WHERE

Location_Information represents the geographical location of the objects. There are different frames of reference for locating things: Address, Position, Place_Identifier, and Place_Indicator. Route represents a set of specific locations that the object is assigned to traverse, where the route is known in advance.

• Location_Information properties: Timestamp (the date/time when the location is assigned to the object), status (valid, out-of-date)

Address represents a physical location identified using typical address-like characteristics.

• Address properties: Number, Street, Neighborhood, City_District, City, District, Region, Country, Postal_Code (as described by [RFC4119])

Position is normally used to identify the current location of moving objects.

• Position properties: Lat (latitude), long (longitude)

Place_Indicator is a unique identifier which is assigned to a settlement based on a hierarchical division of settlements from national to village level.

• Place_Indicator properties: PCode

Place_Identifier is the name used to identify places such as refugee camps.

• Place_Identifier properties: Name, Type, Code (normally different than PCode)

Route represents a set of locations and estimated arrival and departure time to/from those locations.