Emergency Response Workflow Resource Requirements Modeling and Analysis

Abstract

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> A workflow management system determines the flow of work according to predefined business process definitions. It manages the resources required to meet goals and provides monitoring facilities and control capabilities. Resources can become important decision factors when combined with control flow information. This is particularly true in an emergency response system where large quantities of resources, including emergency responders, ambulances, fire trucks, medications, food, clothing, etc., are required. In this paper, we introduce a resource-constrained and decision support workflow model. This model enables users to specify resource consumption and production when executing a task, and decision policies to choose a path at a given situation where multiple execution branches are available. The paper also presents an efficient resource requirement analysis algorithm that can be used to decide the minimum resource set that, if satisfied, the workflow can be executed along any possible path till finish without the occurrence of resource shortage. A case study is presented to show the use of the proposed approach. </para>