The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008 
Mitigation 
4.2 Interactions between DRA and SA 
Figure 3. Creation of Disaster Management Knowledge Base 
4. KNOWLEDGE-ORIENTED SENSOR WEB 
Current research of sensor web is primarily focused on the 
sensing and data collection. Specific to the domain of disaster 
management, most of applications only use sensor web as a 
sensing tool to collect disaster monitoring data and detect 
disaster events. In fact, as a complete cycle of disaster 
management and emergency response, sensing, monitoring and 
detection are only parts of it. Response, countermeasures and 
actions taken by disaster managers and emergency responders 
play same critical roles for the success of disaster management. 
In order to meet this need, in the following section, a 
conceptual framework of knowledge-oriented sensor web for 
disaster management is proposed. 
4.1 Knowledge-Oriented Sensor Web: Conceptual 
Framework 
The aim of proposed framework (Figure 4. ) is to integrate 
disaster sensing with disaster decision making, thus existing 
sensing-based sensor web can be enhanced and upgraded into 
knowledge-oriented sensor web. 
The following abbreviations are used in Figure 4. 
P: Prediction 
ED: Event Detection 
DRA: Disaster Response Agents 
SA: Sensor Agents 
SP: Sensors Platform 
SM: Science Models 
R&R: Retasking & Reconfiguration 
A&R: Actions & Responses 
D&H: Disaster & Hazard 
When implementing a knowledge-oriented sensor web for 
disaster management based on the proposed conceptual 
framework, the most important aspect of this kind of sensor 
web is the interactions between disaster response agents (DRA) 
and sensor agents (SA). Without the implementation of the 
interactions between them, a knowledge-oriented sensor web 
for disaster management cannot be truly achieved. The details 
of interactions between DRA and SA are shown in Figures 5. 
Disaster Response Agents 
Figure 5. Interactions between DRA and SA 
The interactions between DRA and SA lay a solid foundation 
for the implementation of knowledge-oriented sensor web. In 
fact, from the technical perspective, the interactions between 
them depend on the specific network environment. When 
operating through proprietary network such as wireless sensor 
network, the interactions can be carried out directly using