Emergency-driven assured information sharing in secure online social networks: A position paper

The United States and its Allied Forces have had tremendous success in combat operations. This includes combat in Germany, Japan and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. However not all of our stabilization and reconstruction operations (SARO) have been as successful. Several studies have been carried out on SARO by organizations such as the National Defense University and the Naval Post Graduate School. These studies have shown that security as well as power and jobs are key ingredients for success during SARO. One of the major conclusions is that we need to plan for SARO while we are planning for combat. These studies have also analyzed the various technologies that are needed for successfully carrying out SARO which include sensors, robotics and information management. As stated in the work by the Naval Postgraduate School, we need to determine the social, political and economic relationships between the local communities as well as determine who the important people are. One particular task during SARO is managing emergencies and crisis situations as well as carrying out humanitarian operations. In such situations, it is critical that the information between various individuals as well as agencies be shared. Furthermore, social relationships between the different parties need to be analyzed. To address the key technical challenges for emergency management and crisis response during SARO and related humanitarian efforts we are exploring assured information sharing and secure social networking to develop novel technologies to support emergency management and crisis response.