The RESCUE project plan is built around three major components: integrative research projects, artifacts, and integrative testbeds.  The integrative research program allows RESCUE to leverage the project’s resources to explore and develop holistic solutions to complex, crisis response issues.  By implementing a multi-disciplinary approach to solving these problems, the RESCUE project is able to address the socio-political and organizational contexts in which critical decisions are made during a crisis. Multi-disciplinary collaboration also makes it possible for RESCUE to address other challenges, such as those associated with public warnings during crisis conditions. Holistic solutions to crisis response challenges are needed if the project is to have a broad impact on current practices in emergency response.  In order to ensure broader impacts, RESCUE has committed significant resources to the development of project artifacts.  These artifacts are in many cases the result of multi-investigator collaborations.  Within the vision of RESCUE, these products constitute the legacy of the RESCUE after the project ends.  Finally, to validate the efficacy of our research, we have developed a set of large-scale testbeds that will test and evaluate our research findings in different crisis response settings.  We are able to simulate disasters within the context of large regional events, e.g., an earthquake, as well as localized disasters that may occur as a result of a terrorist attack. 

Together, these three components form the basis for achieving groundbreaking research, developing validated solutions to complex crisis response issues, and providing for a legacy that lives beyond the five-year life of RESCUE.