Although disasters differ depending on the nature and context in which they occur, their management faces almost the same and repetitive set of challenges. These challenges are mainly related to inter-organisational relationships and the commitments of multiple stakeholders collaborating under severe time and resource constraints.

For this special Issue we are particularly interested in original work on the current state of research and development in collaboration technologies and systems for disaster management. This includes the whole cycle of detection, prevention, readiness, response, and recovery from disasters.

Typically, responding to a disaster or crisis requires multiple distributed agencies, task groups and individuals to be involved in making collaborative decisions and taking coordinated actions. Thus, contributions that improve information technology support for collaboration in disaster management and emergency responses are solicited.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Disaster Management (ICT-DM'2014), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.

Subject Coverage

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Collaborative information system architectures, frameworks and technologies
Human-computer intelligent interaction
Pervasive middleware/systems for emergency management
Emergency communication systems
Wireless networks and sensors networks for emergency management
Wireless protocols for emergency management
QoS in critical communications
Interactive communication media/content
Distributed/cooperative media
Collaborative decision making under stress, time pressure and limited resources
Internet/web-based systems/products
Service-oriented architectures for collaboration
Cloud computing for disaster management
Ontology-based approaches for collaboration
Contextual and situation-based collaboration
Security and privacy concerns in information sharing
Social media and networks for participation and collaboration
Modelling and simulation of collaboration
Information infrastructure and electronic governance
Public transportation and traffic management
Geospatial information technology and geo-collaboration
Web mapping and geographic information systems (GIS)
Visualisation and visual analytics

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper has been completely re-written and if appropriate written permissions have been obtained from any copyright holders of the original paper).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process.

All papers must be submitted online. To submit a paper, please read our Submitting articles page.

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 28 November, 2014

Notification to authors: 28 January, 2015

Final versions due: 29 March, 2015


Guest Editors:
Nadia Nouali-Taboudjemat, Nadjib Badache and Omar Nouali, CERIST, Algeria
Aris M. Ouksel, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Zakaria Maamar, Zayed University, UAE