A few seconds after noon on May 26, 1983, a major earthquake occurred in the Japan Sea about 100 km off the coast of Akita Prefecture, which is located in the northeast Honshu, Japan. The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.7 on the Richter scale, as measured by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). Four individuals lost their lives directly from the earthquake, and considerable property damage oc…
Information technology (IT) has the potential to play a critical role in managing natural and human-made disasters. Damage to communications infrastructure, along with other communications problems exacerbated the difficulties in carrying out response and recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina. To assist government planning in this area, the Congress, in the E-government Act of 2002, dire…
Section 214 of the E-government Act of 2002 called on the Administrator of the Office of Electronic Government in the Office of Management and Budget, in consultation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to "ensure that a study is conducted on using information technology to enhance crisis preparedness, response, and consequence management of natural and manmade disasters." The …