Many recent events have highlighted our vulnerability to both natural and anthropogenic disasters.  The impacts of floods, tornados, wildfires, agricultural blights, terrorist acts, and other events are felt in terms of human suffering, property damage, loss of livelihood, economic deterioration, and environmental destruction. Efforts to reduce the impacts of emergencies and disasters require getting the right information to the right people at the right time. The current 'non-system' does not effectively use the wealth of information that resides with various organizations. Our ability to collect high quality, high resolution data has undergone a revolution, but information management has not kept up. The nation needs a more effective information infrastructure to support its emergency preparedness and response communities. We are proposing to address the critical information technology requirements of disaster and emergency response communities by creating CrisisGrid, a data and systems infrastructure built upon a Grid of Grids approach to advance the ways in which information is monitored, analyzed, modeled, visualized, and delivered. Through a partnership among IUPUI, IUB, Purdue, and the Open GIS Consortium, we propose to apply Internet, Grid, GIS, sensor, and visualization technology to the emergency preparedness and response (EPR) and critical infrastructure projection (CIP) activities of government and business. This presentation discusses our initial model of this new approach to critical information technology, which focuses on an area of disaster management of concern to Indiana’s floods.