[2] In 2008 the United States Air Force and the University of Colorado Center for Homeland Security surveyed several hundred emergency management personnel seeking to prioritize user requirements.
[3] Common features of the software include Geographic Information Systems (GIS), weather and plume modeling, resource management, and Command, Control, and Communication (C3) functions.
A lack of interoperability was identified as a key drawback (although not limited in scope to the software) in a National Institute of Justice feature comparison report conducted in 2001.
Simulation can be performed both to analyze possible emergency scenarios, to evaluate recovery strategies and to train institutional or private operators in better facing a crisis.
Simulations can deal with weather and climate forecasting, landslides, ash clouds propagation, earthquake impact, cyber attacks, people behavior, and critical infrastructures.