  The use of High Performance Computing (HPC) to compliment urgent decision
making in the event of disasters is an important future potential use of
supercomputers. However, the usage modes involved are rather different from how
HPC has been used traditionally. As such, there are many obstacles that need to
be overcome, not least the unbounded wait times in the batch system queues, to
make the use of HPC in disaster response practical. In this paper, we present
how the VESTEC project plans to overcome these issues and develop a working
prototype of an urgent computing control system. We describe the requirements
for such a system and analyse the different technologies available that can be
leveraged to successfully build such a system. We finally explore the design of
the VESTEC system and discuss ongoing challenges that need to be addressed to
realise a production level system.
