Planning Requirements for Hierarchical Coalitions in Distaster Relief Domains

Abstract

Coalitions are organisations whose members combine abilities and knowledge to carry out mutual purposes. Rather than to be composed by a team of equals, coalitions generally require a hierarchical structure of command and control where agents take different and complementary kinds of decisions at each level. This paper presents the development of a hierarchical coalition support system, considering its use in disaster relief operations. Based on this application, we discuss the planning requirements of the system and how they will be integrated to provide important functionalities to the coalition members.