Welcome!

The conference will be virtual, focusing on delivering content in an engaging format to foster active collaboration, as well as having a venue at RMIT’s Storey Hall in Melbourne for the three days of the conference. There will also be a venue at Auckland University of Technology on the second day of the conference, Tuesday 8 November.

The second Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) Asia Pacific regional conference will take place on 7-9 November 2022. This event follows the first ISCRAM Asia Pacific conference that was held in Wellington New Zealand in November 2018.

The conference theme is “Dealing with the unexpected” and this has been the lived experience for everyone recently as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. In Australia, the storm and flooding events on the east coast in February and March 2022 were of a scale and intensity that caught many by surprise with some communities still recovering and governments grappling with how to lessen the impact of future events. However, before that the Australian summer of 2019/20 saw some of the largest and most widespread bushfires in living memory with unprecedented smoke haze leading to extensive air quality at hazardous levels. Such events could be expected to increase in frequency and intensity due to climate change.

The need to evolve appropriate information systems to support crisis management has been repeatedly demonstrated in Australia after bushfires, flooding, cyclones, severe storms and now pandemic. Each of these events bring unique challenges and thereby the principles of emergency management are continuously being improved through ongoing critical review and by sharing experiences and research results. Supporting these activities is one of the principle aims of ISCRAM.

Technology led research in information systems development has now become a key driver in emergency management and disaster risk reduction. Innovation in this space is now starting to lead to positive impacts in other allied areas such as remote sensing, modelling and analytics and artificial intelligence.

Given its exposure to hazard risks, Australia continues to improve planning for high consequence but low probability events, as well as for those of low consequence but high probability, across a range of scenarios. With close integration and interaction of both academic and professional organisations, Melbourne fosters world-class research and innovation in the domain of crisis information and communication management.

ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2022 will cater for practitioners, researchers and developers from government, NGOs, and industry, particularly from around the Pacific, but encompassing global participation from New Zealand, Oceania, Asia, North and South America and Europe.

Mahesh Prakash and Raj Prasanna
Conference Co-chairs ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2022