The Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) Community was established in 2004. At that time much research and development (R&D) was directed at computer hardware, communications and sensors, whilst no active community was concerned with the requirements, design, development or evaluation of information systems supporting individuals and organisations responding to or managing a crisis. Establishing the ISCRAM Community was a rather intuitive response on the part of Information Systems researchers to their concern at this deficiency. Since its inception ISCRAM has evolved into a global R&D community consisting of researchers, scholars, teachers, students, practitioners and policy-makers. Its website at iscram.org is the central information hub for all members; at time of writing, 1,300 users had registered.

Doubling
Since 2004, three major annual conferences have been held: two in Brussels and the most recent one in 2006 in Newark, New Jersey. Attendance has doubled from about eighty in 2004 to over 160 in 2006. In between these meetings, a number of special sessions were organised after 2005 at the annual AMCIS (Americas Conference on Information Systems) meetings (in New York City, Omaha Nebraska, and Acapulco, respectively), as well as at HICSS (Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences). In total these meetings have included close on two hundred oral presentations by members of the ISCRAM community.

Exposure
Accepted contributions for all ISCRAM conferences have been published in official proceedings carrying an ISBN number. In addition, all papers and presentations are made available to registered users after the conference on the iscram.org website. The number of papers accepted grew from 29 in 2004, to 49 in 2005 and 77 in 2006, and overall acceptance rate has been consistent at around 55%. In addition, selected papers have been submitted for publication in established journals for crisis management and information systems. In 2005, special issues were published of the Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (Volume 6(3)) and Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (Volume 2(1)). The March 2007 issue of the Communications of the ACM on Emergency Response Information Systems contained a special section giving tremendous exposure to the work of some of the most active ISCRAM members.

ISCRAM Society
The ISCRAM R&D community will develop in several ways. Two important new activities have been organised. In June 2006 the first ISCRAM-TIEMS Summer School for PhD students at Tilburg University in the Netherlands attracted 22 doctoral students from twelve countries to work on the theme ‘Blended Crisis Response Teams’. In September 2006 the first ISCRAM-China Workshop held at Harbin Engineering University, China, attracted more than a hundred Chinese researchers in the ISCRAM area. Given its current size and rate of growth, the Community needs a stronger base upon which to consolidate and continue its many activities. In response, a steering group at the 2006 conference agreed to create bylaws for establishing a formal ISCRAM Society, to result in a solid foundation able fully to support this active, growing and global R&D community. You are welcome to join us.