Disasters: The Journal of Disaster Studies, Policy and Management, in press, Blackwell
Publishing, U.K.
von Lubitz, Beakley, Patircelli Network-centric in disaster management
1
“ALL HAZARDS APPROACH” TO NETWORK-CENTRIC
DISASTER MANAGEMENT: THE ROLE OF
INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT,
AND BOYD’S OODA LOOP IN DISASTER LEADERSHIP
Dag KJE von Lubitz, HG&GA Dow College of Health Sciences, Central Michigan
University, Mt. Pleasant, MI, USA and MedSMART, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI 48904, USA;
James E. Beakley, LJT & Associates, Office of Anti-Terrorism Force Protection, Naval
Base Ventura County, CA USA; Frédéric Patricelli, ICTEK Worldwide, Corso Sallustio,
171, Pizzoli, AQ, 67017, Italy
ABSTRACT
The ever increasing complexity of disasters demands utilization of knowledge
that exists outside domains traditionally used in disaster management. To be
operationally useful, such knowledge must be extracted, combined with the
information generated by the disaster itself, and transformed into actionable
knowledge. The process is hampered by the existing, business-oriented
approaches to KM, technical issues in access to relevant, multi-domain
information/knowledge, and by the executive decision processes based
predominantly on historical knowledge. Consequently, as shown by many
recent incidents, the management of large scale (mega) disasters is often
inefficient and exceedingly costly. The paper demonstrates that integration of
modified Information and Knowledge management with the concepts of
network-centric operations (NCO) and network-enabled capabilities (NEC),
and with Boyd’s OODA Loop-based decision-making in unpredictable and
dynamically changing environments may address some of these problems
Key words: disaster, disaster management, leadership, disaster recovery,
information management, knowledge management, actionable knowledge, network-
centric warfare, network-centricity, NEC, Network Enabled Capability, prodrome,
telecommunications, NGN, Next Generation Networks
________________________________________________________________________
Corresponding author: Dag KJE von Lubitz
Electronic correspondence: dvlubitz@med-smart.org
Mail:
Dr. Dag von Lubitz
Office of the Dean
HG&GA Dow College of Health Sciences
Central Michigan University
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48804, USA
