Formal Modelling and Comparing of Disaster Plans.

Abstract

Every municipality in The Netherlands has its own disaster plan. A disaster plan contains the blueprint of how to handle incidents in the municipality with the aim of preventing incidents to grow into disasters. Given that each municipality has its own organisations, enterprises, infrastructure, and general layout, the disaster plans also differ. On the other hand, the disaster plans have a lot in common. Some municipalities use a common starting point, others develop their own disaster plan from scratch. In this paper two independently developed disaster plan are compared using formal modelling techniques. The analysis reveals that some interesting differences do not stem from a difference in the makings of the municipality. These differences touch the fundamentals of the communication during incident management, and might well have a critical impact in dealing with pending disasters.