ROME4EU. The Roman Orchestration Mobile Engine for Emergency Units
People: Daniele Battista, Alessio De Gaetanis, Massimiliano de Leoni, Massimo Mecella, Alessandro Pezzullo, Alessandro Russo, Costantino Saponaro
Nowadays, process management systems (PMSs) are widely used for the management of “administrative” processes characterized by a clear and well-defined structure. Besides such scenarios, which present mainly static characteristics (i.e., deviations and mobility are not the rule, but the exception), PMSs can be used also in mobile and highly dynamic situations, such as in coordinating operators/devices/robots/sensors during emergency situations. This is particularly important in scenarios for emergency management, such the ones addressed in the EU project WORKPAD (http://www.workpad-project.eu) in which PMSs are used within teams of emergency operators in order to coordinate their activities. In such scenarios, the members of a team are equipped with PDAs and coordinated through a PMS residing on a leader device (usually a PDA or an ultra-mobile laptop). Devices communicate among them through ad hoc networks, and in order to carry on the process, they need to be continually connected each other. ROME4EU is a prototype of a real PMS entirely running on mobile devices. Currently no PMSs entirely run on smart devices; indeed, there are systems in which client applications (e.g., forms to accept/refuse the assigned tasks, etc.) can be executed on smart devices such as PDAs, but not the entire system is running on PDAs, including the server components in charge of tasks/activities scheduling, etc. Conversely, in ROME4EU, all the components are deployed on PDAs equipped with the Windows Mobile operating system, thus making it really applicable in pervasive scenario.
Software