Emergency Response Reimagined for Energy and Resources
AI-powered information management for crisis response
Industry Backdrop
Energy and resource companies operate in high-stakes environments where emergencies—ranging from industrial accidents and natural disasters to cyberattacks—can escalate rapidly. In sectors such as oil and gas, utilities, chemicals, mining, and engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC), the consequences of delayed or disjointed responses can be catastrophic, both in human and financial terms.
Despite improvements in overall safety, significant incidents continue to occur. Traditional emergency response systems often rely on fragmented data, outdated documentation, and siloed communication channels. During a crisis, response teams may struggle to access critical engineering drawings, safety protocols, or real-time operational data—delays that can cost lives and escalate damage.
The complexity of modern industrial operations compounds these challenges. Companies manage vast networks of assets across remote and hazardous locations, generating massive volumes of technical and regulatory information. Cybersecurity threats are also evolving in sophistication, requiring faster, more coordinated responses supported by accurate, accessible information.
To meet these challenges, industry leaders are strengthening their emergency response models. AI-powered information management platforms are emerging as critical enablers, offering real-time data access, intelligent search, predictive analytics, and automated workflows that enhance situational awareness and accelerate decision-making.
Several additional key trends will drive the adoption of information management technologies and best practices in the energy and resources sector for emergency response readiness, including:
- Growing skills gaps as experienced workers retire.
- Increasing complexity of industrial systems, requiring accurate digital twins.
- AI-enabled decision support and predictive analytics for faster, more informed responses.
- Rising operational costs and pressure to improve efficiency.
- Regulatory pressure for improved safety, traceability, and documentation during incidents.
This paper explores how information management technologies and best practices can help emergency response readiness.
The OpenText Vision for Emergency Response Readiness
In today's highly regulated and high-complexity operating environments, energy and resource companies must be prepared to respond to emergencies with speed, precision, and confidence. Whether facing equipment failure, environmental incidents, cyberattacks, or natural disasters, the ability to act decisively depends on how well information is managed and mobilized.
At the core of this vision is a simple but powerful principle: information management best practices and technologies should be used to prevent accidents. However, in the case an accident does occur, those same practices and technologies must be ready to support emergency response.
OpenText envisions a future where emergency readiness is embedded into daily operations—where content, communications, expertise, supply chains, and digital systems are all aligned to support rapid, coordinated action. This means delivering trusted content in context, enabling teams to instantly access the right information at the right time. It means transforming communications to ensure clarity and personalization across every stakeholder group. It means connecting frontline teams with expert knowledge and AI-powered support to resolve issues in real time.
Emergency readiness also requires full visibility into supply chains, so critical parts and services can be tracked and delivered without delay. And it demands resilient digital performance—ensuring that websites, support portals, and communication platforms remain reliable under pressure.
In the following sections, we explore how OpenText brings this vision to life through six key capabilities:
- Readiness through content in context
- Reimagined conversations for crisis response
- On-demand expertise
- Supply chain clarity in critical moments
- Crisis-proof digital performance
Together, these capabilities empower energy and resource companies to transform emergency response from a fragmented, manual process into a coordinated, intelligent, and resilient system.
Readiness Through Content in Context
In an emergency, speed and clarity are everything. Response teams must instantly access the right information—whether it's engineering drawings, safety procedures, asset documentation, or training records. OpenText enables organizations to centralize and contextualize critical content, ensuring that emergency responders can act with confidence and precision.
By connecting trusted business, engineering, and operational content across departments and systems, organizations can eliminate information silos and reduce time spent searching for vital documents. Intelligent document control ensures that emergency playbooks are current, roles are clearly defined, and personnel are properly trained and certified.
AI-powered search and virtual assistants further accelerate response by helping staff quickly locate answers across millions of documents or thousands of file types and repositories, including ERP, EAM, GIS, and plant maintenance systems. Teams can navigate complex engineering data with ease, linking directly to related systems and content for a complete operational picture.
With content delivered in context—tailored to the user's role, location, and task—organizations can respond faster, reduce risk, and recover more effectively.
Reimagined Conversations for Crisis Response
Effective communication is critical during emergencies—not just within response teams, but across customers, employees, communities, and government stakeholders. In high-stress situations, clarity, speed, and personalization can make the difference between confusion and coordinated action.
Modern information management enables organizations to transform how they communicate during crises. From managing drone footage and site surveillance media to delivering real-time updates across web, mobile, and social channels, organizations can ensure that the right message reaches the right audience at the right time.
AI-powered tools can personalize communications at scale, tailoring alerts, instructions, and updates based on user roles, locations, and preferences. Call centers can be enhanced with speech and multichannel analytics to monitor quality, extract insights, and improve responsiveness during high-volume periods.
Whether it's issuing evacuation notices, updating employees on safety protocols, or informing regulators and the public, organizations must be ready to communicate with precision and empathy. By reimagining conversations through intelligent content and experience management, emergency response becomes not only faster—but more human, trusted, and effective.
On-Demand Expertise
In emergencies, frontline teams often face questions or issues that fall outside documented procedures. Rapid access to expert knowledge is essential. By connecting subject matter experts directly to emergency response teams through integrated service management, organizations can resolve issues faster and more accurately. Simultaneously, AI assistants empower customer service and field staff to self-solve inquiries by intelligently surfacing relevant knowledge—even when it's not formally documented. This reduces delays, minimizes escalations, and ensures that critical operations continue without disruption. By combining human expertise with AI-driven support, organizations can respond with greater agility and confidence when every second counts.
Supply Chain Clarity in Critical Moments
When emergencies strike, knowing the exact status of spare parts, replacement equipment, and service orders is vital. Secure B2B integration ensures real-time visibility into supply chain transactions, helping teams act without delay. AI-powered self-service tools allow staff to simply ask when a critical part will arrive or track urgent orders—no digging through systems required. This instant access to supply chain intelligence reduces downtime, supports faster recovery, and keeps operations moving when every minute matters.
Crisis-Proof Digital Performance
In a crisis, digital channels must perform flawlessly. Simulating and testing customer experiences across websites and support applications helps organizations identify and resolve performance issues before they impact emergency response. By proactively validating system behavior under stress, teams can ensure that critical applications remain fast, reliable, and accessible when demand spikes. This readiness not only protects customer trust but also ensures uninterrupted access to vital information when it's needed most.
Why OpenText?
OpenText serves thousands of companies across the world in the energy and resources sector, including 24 of the top 25 by market cap in their mission to safely, reliably, and cost effectively deliver energy and other critical resources to the world.
OpenText powers and protects information to give organizations the information advantage. We sit at the center of connected ecosystems and the internet of clouds, and play a critical role as our customers adopt cloud, security, and AI.
The world is in a race for energy and essential commodities, and that race is just as much about information management as it is about energy and critical resources themselves. We help organizations with the most complex information challenges to reimagine information and elevate human potential. Our solutions connect knowledge with action to spur innovation and growth across the energy and resources sector along with many others.
Proposed Next Steps
We welcome the opportunity to be your strategic partner in your information management journey. Together, we can outline a vision and identify opportunities to strengthen emergency response readiness and elevate human potential across the organization. Below are suggested next steps to ensure your emergency response plans are in lockstep with your information management journey.
-
Introductory meeting
Bring together the OpenText Global Account Director or Senior Account Representative with your organization's CIO, COO, CCO, VP of HSE or decision maker on emergency response readiness investments.
-
Joint roadmap exchange
Hold a day-long information exchange with emergency response leaders (Directors and above) and OpenText. OpenText will gather insight about your emergency response processes and associated digital transformation initiatives, current approaches, and obstacles. OpenText will then provide an overview of information management technologies and best practices that support those initiatives.
-
Business Value Consulting workshops
Engage OpenText Business Value Consulting with supporting lines of business to assess their current state and quantify the business impact of potential OpenText solutions to strengthen emergency response readiness.
Contact
Phil Schwarz
Sr. Industry Strategist - Energy & Resources
Email: pschwarz@opentext.com
