An Integrated Framework for Comprehensive Collaborative Emergency Management

Effective decision making plays a paramount role for successful emergency management (EM). Decisions should include collaborating inputs and feedback from a wide range of relevant emergency stakeholders such as emergency agencies, government, experts and communities. Although this kind of collaborative decision making is ideal, the process can be lengthy and complex. While there has been substantial research in EM, there is a lack of integrated frameworks to structure these contributions. Without an integrated framework, the decision making process can be inefficient and suggestions of the stakeholders may be neglected or excluded inadvertently. This paper presents the "Integrated Framework for Comprehensive Collaborative Emergency Management" (IFCCEM). IFCCEM aims to provide a collaborative mechanism so that all agencies as well as communities can contribute in the decision making. IFCCEM is based on the 'All Hazards Approach' and can be used by all agencies. The developed framework is illustrated with an application for collaborative decision making.