The Backbone of Decision Support Systems: The Sensor to Decision Chain

Understanding the current situation is critical in every natural disaster or crisis. Therefore, there is a need for accurate and up-to-date information about the scope, extent and impact of a disaster. The basis for this information is data that is available through a variety of sensors. Decision Support Systems (DSSs) support decision makers in disaster management, response and recovery by providing early warnings, insights into the current situation and recommendations for mitigation actions. For this purpose, raw sensor data needs to be collected, analyzed, integrated, and its semantics need to be automatically understood by the system. This series of processes forms a generic sensor to decision chain. In this paper, we present solutions and technologies to integrate those steps seamlessly, also demonstrating how each step of the pipeline can be visualized.