Decision Support for Crisis Incidents

Crisis incidents occur in both business and public domains. This article focuses on non-routine incidents and explores uses of technologies for supporting crisis management tasks. A Crisis Incident Spiral of Decision Support helps identify useful decision support and information technologies. Additionally, a Crisis Incident Process/Decision Support Matrix categorizes processes of crisis planning, response and management with decision support technologies. Ideally, the matrix helps organize and stimulate thinking about novel DSS applications. Not all crises are of equal magnitude and different computerized decision support is needed in different types of crisis incidents.