Reviewer #1:

I found this paper confusing. If the paper is intended to describe a new approach to organizing the management of a crisis, then a discussion of the other methods employed and the benefits provided by this method needs to be clearly established. This is not done.

Little theoretical basis is provided for the method. It is not enough to describe how to construct the diagrams.

the value and assumptions of such a discipline also needs to outlined in detail.

Little mention is made of the Bam incident. Given that it is mentioned in the title, I assumed that it would be used an example of where such a method would be useful.

I was a little confused by the term “holographic”

"A system...in such cases." - unclear

Is the holographic and management system the same thing?


"immediately-after-disaster" - clumsy, re-word

“Thus, the system that will be discussed in this paper introduces a suitable way to mobilize available resources and to reduce consequences of disasters.” - Exactly what is being developed needs to be explained in more detail.


“Natural disasters have occurred since the earliest times, and despite the development of science and technology, they still cause many victims each year” - vague and unnecessary

"One reason for this is the...." - this is not really proven. Also, seems a bit unnecessary

"Massive time pressures" - not all incidents have the same time pressures

.

Unnecessary reference to Chaos Theory here.

Methodology

A number of critical conditions are described with no justification.

"It is named..." - confusing, re-word.

Doesn't the need to describe the figures (especially the arrows) undermine the value of this approach?


Reviewer #2:

First of all, authors seem to have a weak knowledge of the difference between emergency management and crisis situations.

An information system is useful for emergency management, as long as it is part of the organization, which means that the many stakeholders have already defined and experienced cooperation among them; they have been trained to the daily use of the system in order to efficiently update, validate and share data. even though, the emergency management staff has to define procedures and plans (generally manual) to cope with electric power failures, malfunctions of communications, lack of data and uncertainties.

A series of such reliable decision systems are on the market in "advanced" countries at a national level. Availability of such systems at the regional or municipal scale is much less common, as hardware, software and overall data collection is too expensive for most communities. Investing in such systems in developing countries is not yet on their agendas.

When the situation turns out of control and the crisis begins, the emergency management activities will be overwhelmed and the evolution into a chaotic situation depends on two factors: robustness and resilience. Will procedures, plans and support systems resist to the many constraints and uncertainties (robustness) and will the organization be able to invent strategies and ad-hoc organizational patterns at all levels to reduce damage and recover control (resilience)?

Here are for me the real questions.

It hides all the organizational aspects of emergency management (relations between headquarters, local HQ and field troops, assessing priorities, reporting of tasks, etc.).


It tries to make the reader think that some tasks may be done automatically by a system ("the system is able to learn which information is relevant for whom at which given moment"), when all practitioners know that this is the role of the crisis team and moreover that the priority is to get data (specially weak signals) and build sensemaking more than sending information to people.

it hides all responsibility aspects (if the wrong information is transmitted and damage occurs from a wrong action, who will be responsible in court: the system designer or the manager?).

it doesn't tackle a key question during such dramatic situations: how to establish cooperation between the official services (civil security, police & army, health system) and NGO's? How to organize the sharing of tasks among the many NGO's?

How to make all those institutions use the same (or compatible) data & systems?