EmeRTeS 2023

About the Workshop

The increasing risks of disasters, as well as the long-term negative effects of catastrophes on people's lives, livelihoods, economies, and the environment, have posed severe challenges to long-term development. Rapid onset catastrophic disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, cyclones, and flash floods obliterate years and decades of hard-won development gains in a matter of minutes or hours. Slow onset creeping disasters like drought engulf significant parts of developing countries, posing a threat to food security, livelihood, nutrition, and health of vulnerable groups, particularly women and children. The recurring disasters like floods, landslides, cloud bursts, hailstorms, heat and cold waves, forest fires, insect attacks, epidemics, and technological catastrophes such as mining, industrial, and transport-related mishaps result in countless deaths, assets, wealth, and economic losses. The more recent COVID-19 pandemic have added a new dimension to the complicated dangers of disasters, affecting communities and countries across regions, killing people and disrupting society and economy.

During an emergency, bringing the right information, at the right time, to the right person, can significantly impact the quality of emergency response for first responders as well as the general public. However, responding to emergencies quickly and efficiently is a challenge that communities have always faced. Thanks to emerging emergency response technologies, it’s becoming easier for responders to assess threats, share information, and plan emergency responses. Many of the latest innovations in emergency response are poised to revolutionize the way response teams analyze events and coordinate their activities, while others are dramatically changing the way everyday citizens handle emergencies. Such technologies, at the system level, can design robust systems, resilient networks and interoperable protocols in challenged situations. At the information level, they can build situational awareness from large-scale, multi-modal information. At the application level, social media research can provide actionable insights upon which decisions can be made. While the use of drones, satellite imagery through GIS and social media has already made their way to emergency response, there is a lot more happening behind the scenes that can have an impact too.

The goal of the 5th International Workshop on Emergency Response Technologies and Services (EmeRTeS) 2023 is to explore the application of new and innovative technology research towards improving emergency response and management, with a thrust on managing pandemic disasters. The focus is to provide an inter-disciplinary platform for researchers to exchange ideas, present results, share experience, stimulate new research, and foster collaborations among computer scientists, engineers, social scientists, representatives from Govt. and NGOs and disaster science experts to develop recommendations for effective emergency response.