The aim of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for the design of information systems for crisis management. The framework is grounded in the idea that the more an organisational system is unstructured (such as in a crisis situation), the more we need information technologies (IT) which are able to promote self organizing processes. In addition, IT systems should also help to improve the shared knowledge between stakeholders in order to promote a new form of organisation. Following this perspective, we will first give some examples showing that emergence and self organization are mandatory processes in the first phase in a crisis. We will also address the two notions of robustness and resilience in order to develop a more efficient approach in engineering crisis systems.