Community-based cloud for emergency management

Natural and man-made emergencies pose an ever-present threat to the society. In response to the growing number of recent disasters, such as the Indonesian volcanic eruption, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Haitian earthquake, Pakistani floods, and in particular, the Red River crest that causes flood almost every year here in Fargo, North Dakota, we propose a community-based scalable cloud computing infrastructure for large-scale emergency management. This infrastructure will coordinate various organizations and integrate massive amounts of heterogeneous data sources to effectively deploy personnel and logistics to aid in search and rescue. The infrastructure also will aid in damage assessment, enumeration, and coordination to support sustainable livelihood by protecting lives, properties and the environment.