Secure cross-domain data sharing architecture for crisis management

Abstract

Crisis management requires rapid sharing of data among organizations responders. Existing crisis management practices rely on ad hoc or centralized data sharing based on agreements written in natural language. The ambiguity of natural language specifications often leads to errors and can hinder data availability. Therefore, it is desirable to develop automatic data sharing systems. This also presents additional challenges, such as evaluation of security constraints in different administrative domains and in situations with intermittent network connectivity. We compare two different architectural approaches to develop secure data sharing solutions. The first approach assumes reliable network connectivity, while the second approach works in ad hoc networks. We then suggest a unified architecture that caters for both scenarios.