Perspectives of Simplified Graphical Domain-Specific Languages as Communication Tools in Developing Mobile Systems for Reporting Life-Threatening Situations

Reporting systems, based on mobile technologies and feedback from regular citizens, are constantly gaining popularity, especially when it comes to environmental and cultural heritage protection. Reporting life-threatening situations, such as sudden natural disasters or traffic accidents, constitutes the same class of problems and could be aided by IT systems of similar architecture. Emergency services also could benefit from such kinds of solutions, e.g., by getting an accurate location of the place where help is needed as well as fast exchange of information. Designing and developing systems for reporting life-threatening situations is not a trivial task, requiring tight cooperation among software developers and experts of different domains, who most likely would have trouble with industrially recognized languages and notations. Thus, the question is whether using simplified graphical domain-specific languages (SGDSLs) could help in creating a common communication platform. In order to answer that question, short workshops were conducted at the University of Economics in Prague, Czech Republic and in Lublin, Poland. They involved people trained during their studies to work in administration and emergency services, among others, as policy makers, medicine specialists, environmentalists, or managers. All participants received brief training in graphical modeling languages in the context of modeling mobile applications and were asked to voluntarily fill in an anonymous survey in order to check their knowledge about and attitude toward the presented technologies. Most respondents claimed that SGDSLs oriented on defining a flow of actions might be valuable as tools for creating a common communication platform.