Situation centers and the problem of operational management of counteracting emergencies

Abstract

One of the most pressing issues of our time is the problem of countering emergencies of various origins. In crisis situations, both the ability of critical infrastructure facilities to function and the ability to establish the normal current life in cities and towns of Ukraine and their residents depend on the successful solving of this problem. It, in its turn, directly depends on the quality of solving the problem of operational management of emergency response. One of the possible ways to solve this problem is to automate the processes of planning and operational management of emergency response using situational centers. These issues are covered in the current article. The definitions of situational centers are given and their purposes and capabilities are characterized. A general overview of the problems of planning and operational management of emergency response is given and it is established that traditional approaches to solving these problems require significant changes. In particular, it has been revealed that action plans are traditionally used to plan emergency response processes, which are text documents containing a regulated sequence of actions to counteract a certain emergency and do not allow for a solution in the event of a change in the current situation that is not provided for in such an action plan. The article substantiates the expediency of using the state space graph to present an action plan for countering emergencies, suggests some approaches to support the processes of operational management of countering emergencies in situational centers using a decision support system, and defines the tasks of further research.