EmerMan should work via different level of complexity: the first level should be very simple, with the essential information. Going deeper in the levels you should find more and more details and options, to be sure to not scare the people using it and to not ask them too much time when they haven't it.
When you connect to EmerMan the first page should show:
In particular the following user's types should be available:
This checkbox should be checked by who is/was involved in the emergency situation and needs help and/or has damages.
A victim probably will be scared, confused. Probably will not be able to use EmerMan. Probably will call 911 instead of use EmerMan...
EmerMan probably will never became the main way to ask for help the first time (as soon as the emergency situation happens), but should be useful to ask, later, for help/information.
EmerMan should work in two ways: the first time a victim register, the following 6 steps should be shown. After 6th step and at the following logins EmerMan should appear with an interface divided by tab where each tab is an argument.
The first step of a victim inside EmerMan should regard the identification.
The identification should be as much easier as possible, asking just the basic information:
The Name and Surname/Last name should be free text: no checks should be done.
The Day of birth should be an existing date: if not, an error should be raised.
Place of birth should be almost free text: EmerMan can check the place and suggest places with a similar name but should not be rigid and to stop the user if it is wrong or if it doesn't recognise that place in its database.
EmerMan should show to the user one list with 5th latest created emergency situations in the same country recognised by the user IP location follow by the 5th latest created emergency situations in the rest of the world.
So, 10 entries at maximum, with information about the country, the town/place/area, the category, the name.
If the user can't find the right emergency for her/him case, she/he should be able to create a new one entering the following data:
1: The nearest country should be almost mandatory: EmerMan should ask to enter it if empty, but after a warning it should go on anyway taking as country the country associated to IP location.
The town/Position (GPS) is optional but if empty the user should insert at least the destination / Reference number.
An example: if you have water inside your house you know exactly the place where you are, so you should insert country and town (the street will be asked later. Country and town are about the emergency situation in general, not exactly where you are. You should read about it later...)
2: But if you are in a train or flight or just in a car and there is a crash, may be you don't know where you are exactly, but you know where you were going to go, the flight number, the highway number and/or the last exist you found. These are Destination / Reference number.
However, again, if no town/position and Destination/Reference number are inserted EmerMan should warn the user but go on anyway. The idea is never to stop the user avoiding to hurt her/him. Empty / incomplete data should be fixable later by Emergency Manager operators.
3: The category define the level of the emergency situation. It should be a list of known type but with the possibility to enter also a free text. This, again, to be sure the user will never be stopped by same "strange"/"unknown"/"wrong" data.
4: Contact information: if the victim creates a new emergency situations, a phone number or other contacts information should be inserted to let Emergency Manager operators ask for more information when necessary. See also the "Notify ways".
5: Note is a free text field where the victim can describe the emergency situation.
Anytime anybody creates a new Emergency Situation an alert e-mail should be sent to the e-mail addresses defined by the Country Manager relative to the place of the emergency situation. You will read later about the Country Manager (TODO)...
When the victim associates herself/himself to a emergency situation EmerMan should show all the information provided by the Emergency Operators responsible of that Emergency.
The information can be, i.e., specific phone numbers, specific local offices or specific instruction about what to do, what to not do, etc..
This step will include also request of details information. The requested data are relative to the category of the Emergency Situations and are customise by the Emergency Operators, but can be also "free given" information.
I.e. ask if the victim is in health or not and, if not, to show her/him where to go and/or which phone number to call and/or to show basic first aid steps.
If the category of the Emergency Situation says that people can be dead, all the body identification should be requested. Body identification means that the victim should insert her/him hear colour, eyes colour, tall, weight, blood type, etc. (TO DO: identification data in data with all the body identification fields)
If the victim needs something, i.e. water, food, wears, etc., she/he should be able to ask for it.
EmerMan should work with points, where each point can belong to a person, to an item, an hospital, etc..
The geographical positions should be a common part (used not only by the victims) where it is possible to define where I am, where I'm going to go, where I can go / what it is near me.
The victim should insert her/him position: address or GPS coordinates.
According to the category type, the position of the victim can be traceable: in the mobile app the phone should store, each X minutes, the position of the victim and to send it, if possible, to EmerMan.
Looking inside the geographical positions a victim that needs something should find where to go to have it (i.e. first aid, food, clothes, specific equipment).
The geographical positions should also show the dangerous areas/point, where "dangerous" can be relative to, i.e., :
With these information a victim should be able to decide the best way where to go or how to go from one position to another in a safe way.
It should be very important that every time the victim moves from one point to another this movement it recorded. This should be important to know where the victim is, and for the destination point that knows a victim is coming.
If the victim known about other people involved in the emergency situation, she/he should insert also theirs data.
The data is the same data asked to the victim plus one beginning field asking for the familiarity (i.e. is my son, my father, my friend, my neighbour, etc.). This familiarity field will be used later to see where they are and how they are.
This should be useful to known that other people are involved and to check if they will register themselves as victim. If yes, they are registered as victim, otherwise they become missing people.
The user should insert as much information as possible, writing in each field if the value is sure or unsure.
I.e. I can have a neighbour that everybody calls "Jack the giant" but I don't known him exactly surname / last name, or I can known the age is around 40 or just that his birthday is 2nd March but without knowing the year. The sure/unsure data should be used later inside the looking for somebody. See later... (TODO).
Here it is possible to tell EmerMan if the victim knows something useful to others.
I.e. if in the emergency situation there are injured persons, can be very important to know that somebody is a doctor or a nurse or that has done first aid trainings or similar.
EmerMan, however, should respect the user freedom: if EmerMan will know that there is a doctor and there are injured persons in the neighbours, EmerMan will ask to that doctor if she/he wants to inform the others about her/him, so they know where they can go for first help.
This choice should be switchable also later to avoid to overload the doctor/nurse/etc..
Doctor/nurse/etc. are just an example. Other jobs and knowledge can be useful according to the emergency situation.
The victims that decide the help others should be visible inside the "Step 5: Geographical position"
At this point (after the "jobs/knowledge useful to others") the steps should finish and the site should change into the normal way that is a set of tab pages where you should have the previous 6 steps with the following arguments.
The victim can become a reporter uploading photo, video, description about the situation.
For each uploaded content the victim should indicate to whom is intended to be used, in particular if it has to be shown and used only by the emergency operators or also by the journalists and/or common people that want to know more about the situation.
In some cases it would be good to have periodical images or reports, i.e. about the level of the water of a river. This should be possible also automatically via the mobile apps via a reminder or an automatic "shot and upload" feature (of course this means the device is placed in a fix position).
(This function should be available also to the EmerMan operators)
A victim should be able to report one or more looting. To report it means:
Each time a new looting is inserted, a warning is sent to the EmerMan operators defined as "security operators" by the Country Manager relative to the that Catastrophic event (you will read about it later: TODO).
(This function should be available also to the EmerMan operators)
With this feature it should be possible to prepare one or more wills or similar, via the following data:
Example about how it should work: today somebody creates or modify one or more wills and logout (or the session expires).
If he/she will login again into EmerMan before the "start date time", EmerMan will warn there are one or more wills ready to be sent. He/she should be able to delete them or to modify them but only via the correct password.
If he/she will not login again after the "Start date time", the wills will be sent or published according to the point 4.
May be a reminder should be sent via e-mail or other ways to he/she few
days / hours before to start the send action to be sure he/she didn't
forget about it and he/she is safe.
The victim should provide at least one notify way. With "notify way" it is meant a way the EmerMan itself or the EmerMan's operator can use to contact the victim.
In some situations no phone calls or Internet connection can be available, but this doesn't mean these information are not filled. Remember that EmerMan should work also offline, so these information should be inserted anyway.
May be the notify ways should be always asked with the first steps... Think about it...
This option should be used by who is looking for someone.