An Approach to Supporting Militia Collaboration in Disaster Relief Through a Digital Environment

The continuously increasing frequency of natural disasters makes an efficient organization of relief missions an important target for public safety. In Austria, the regular armed forces, militia units as their reserve, and different civil first responder organizations support such missions. All of them represent important stakeholders for the restoration of public safety. Disaster relief missions need to fulfill demanding requirements and high standards, especially when considering (military) information security. Several digital processes during and after such operations already satisfy these norms, whereas preparatory ones still require improvement. The literature survey included in this paper is therefore intended to provide the foundation for further digitalization of disaster recovery operations by supporting collaboration between a variety of stakeholders. A typical collaboration stretches over several dimensions. This paper focuses on discussing the dimension communication support. The literature survey identifies the requirements, and is followed by a description of a prototype. Interested organizations can readily adopt or adapt the presented results for disaster recovery missions in Austria.