Resilient Emergency Response

Author(s):  
Jiri Trnka ◽  
Björn J.E. Johansson

The focus of this chapter is the design and development of Information and Communication Technologies that support collaborative work and processes in command and control teams, more specifically, in joint emergency response operations. The unique contexts and varying circumstances of response operations have an impact on how collaborative work and interactions among commanders emerge, as well as on the extent to which Information and Communication Technologies are used. This emergence of response operations poses specific methodological complications and demands on how to study command and control teams, and also how to approach high-level design problems. The chapter demonstrates how such analysis can be performed. It presents a study of scenario-based role-playing simulation with professionals – emergency management commanders – as participants. The study documents the work practice of a team of commanders from the Swedish local and regional emergency response organizations responding jointly to an emergency, a medium size forest fire. The study also identifies areas and/or activities that may be enhanced by command and control tools. A combined set of bottom-up data driven and top-down methods – topical episode analysis, communicative roles, socio-metric status and communication modelling – are used to assess communication and interactions among the commanders. The findings indicate that the studied commanders used informal arrangements within the established formal command and control structures, and took informal functions and communicative roles across organizational and domain boundaries to handle diverse incidents and so called pseudo-problems. This identified adaptive and improvised behaviour of the commanders – and the team as whole – was identified as a critical characteristic for effective command and control work in joint response operations. Cross-domain and cross-organizational knowledge was found to be the most important feature of this type of capability to adapt and improvise. The study, further, highlights the significance of employing bottom-up, data driven methods for analysis of design and development processes, as well as important methodological challenges related to this type of analysis.

2013 ◽  
pp. 813-838
Author(s):  
Jiri Trnka ◽  
Björn J.E. Johansson

The focus of this chapter is the design and development of Information and Communication Technologies that support collaborative work and processes in command and control teams, more specifically, in joint emergency response operations. The unique contexts and varying circumstances of response operations have an impact on how collaborative work and interactions among commanders emerge, as well as on the extent to which Information and Communication Technologies are used. This emergence of response operations poses specific methodological complications and demands on how to study command and control teams, and also how to approach high-level design problems. The chapter demonstrates how such analysis can be performed. It presents a study of scenario-based role-playing simulation with professionals – emergency management commanders – as participants. The study documents the work practice of a team of commanders from the Swedish local and regional emergency response organizations responding jointly to an emergency, a medium size forest fire. The study also identifies areas and/or activities that may be enhanced by command and control tools. A combined set of bottom-up data driven and top-down methods – topical episode analysis, communicative roles, socio-metric status and communication modelling – are used to assess communication and interactions among the commanders. The findings indicate that the studied commanders used informal arrangements within the established formal command and control structures, and took informal functions and communicative roles across organizational and domain boundaries to handle diverse incidents and so called pseudo-problems. This identified adaptive and improvised behaviour of the commanders – and the team as whole – was identified as a critical characteristic for effective command and control work in joint response operations. Cross-domain and cross-organizational knowledge was found to be the most important feature of this type of capability to adapt and improvise. The study, further, highlights the significance of employing bottom-up, data driven methods for analysis of design and development processes, as well as important methodological challenges related to this type of analysis.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-29
Author(s):  
Juan Llamas-Rodriguez

Borders and bodies are increasingly regulated by data-capturing mechanisms spread across the world through information and communication technologies. This article traces the features and implications of such a border-body datalogical entanglement through the figure of the drug mule. It analyzes government documents and recorded case studies to argue that this figure emerges from an assemblage of cultural narratives, legal structures, human labor, technical practices, and biological processes. The datalogical drug mule is already implicated in a struggle over what, and how, data is meaningful and actionable. Investigating this figure allows us to begin disentangling the data-driven mechanisms that constitute modern borders and bodies while at the same time accounting for analog continuities in contemporary practices of border security.


Author(s):  
Burak Pak

This paper aims at discussing the potentials of bottom-up design practices in relation to the latest developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by making an in-depth review of inaugural cases. The first part of the study involves a literature study and the elaboration of basic strategies from the case study. The second part reframes the existing ICT tools and strategies and elaborates on their potentials to support the modes of participation performed in these cases. As a result, by distilling the created knowledge, the study reveals the potentials of novel modes of ICT-enabled design participation which exploit a set of collective action tools to support sustainable ways of self-organization and bottom-up design. The final part explains the relevance of these with solid examples and presents a hypothetical case for future implementation. The paper concludes with a brief reflection on the implications of the findings for the future of architectural design education.


Author(s):  
Kaj-Kolja Kleineberg ◽  
Dirk Helbing

AbstractA multidimensional financial system could provide benefits for individuals, companies, and states. Instead of top-down control, which is destined to eventually fail in a hyperconnected world, a bottom-up creation of value can unleash creative potential and drive innovations. Multiple currency dimensions can represent different externalities and thus enable the design of incentives and feedback mechanisms that foster the ability of complex dynamical systems to self-organize and lead to a more resilient society and sustainable economy. Modern information and communication technologies play a crucial role in this process, as Web 2.0 and online social networks promote cooperation and collaboration on unprecedented scales. Within this contribution, we discuss how one dimension of a multidimensional currency system could represent socio-digital capital (Social Bitcoins) that can be generated in a bottom-up way by individuals who perform search and navigation tasks in a future version of the digital world. The incentive to mine Social Bitcoins could sustain digital diversity, which mitigates the risk of totalitarian control by powerful monopolies of information and can create new business opportunities needed in times where a large fraction of current jobs is estimated to disappear due to computerization.


Author(s):  
Ana Nobre

Web 2.0 has transformed the way people interact in the internet, creating new challenges to the production and sharing of information and knowledge. This need is also felt in the educational context, as teachers have to adapt their strategies and methodologies to the digital information and communication technologies in order to take advantage of the tools of collaborative work. To stimulate discussion and fomentation of pedagogical use of DICT, the authors present in this chapter the experience of collective construction of teaching materials that involved the blog as a tool, which allows relational connectivity, hypertextuality, and interactivity between subjects of synchronous and/or asynchronous mode. The study is exploratory and documental in nature, which include the areas of studies on ICT, Web 2.0, and blog use by teachers and students.


Author(s):  
Md. Abdullah Al Harun Khan Chowdhury

In Bangladesh, transport sectors are developing rapidly to meet the increasing demand for transporting passengers and freight inside and outside the country. But there is not such development in railway transport system. The Bangladesh Railway transport system is still using an old technology to monitor and control signalling, scheduling, operations etc. This paper describes various problems in the existing systems and also solutions have been provided considering the existing railway transport systems of Bangladesh. A new system has been developed to control and monitor the total railway transport system from remote locations. While designing the system, various sensors and actuators have been introduced and also Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been applied in the field of railway transport. So a Machatronics aspect of system has been designed to ensure a collision free, safe and efficient operation and management of railway transport system. This system is not only for monitoring and controlling of railway transport but also ensures efficient asset management. As a result face-to-face accidents, cross-road accidents and accidents due to railway line displacements or breakage can be avoided and there will be no loss of assets and valuable human lives.


2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
César Rocha Muniz ◽  
Azael Rangel Camargo

Based on the Social Construction of Technology model, this work examines the collaborative design in Information Society. It comprehends some cognitive aspects of interface and discusses social and technical issues of collaborative work in different community types. Sustained by an empirical study of web interfaces, it establishes some recommendations for the construction of collaborative design interspaces and identifies some possibilities provided by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). It concludes that if we avoid technologically deterministic approaches, there are strong evidences that ICTs provide special support for collaborative design practices and socially relevant technology oriented to creation and transfer.


Author(s):  
Edith Lovos

ABSTRACTThis article presents the results obtained and conclusions reached through the implementation of a strategy of teaching and learning, designed for the development of the laboratory activities for a first programming course. The same is based on the application of the collaborative work using a development environment, which combines some functionality provided by the learning management system, Moodle and a module that integrates the same, called Virtual Programming Lab (VPL). Future professionals in computer science by its specificity labor, will include and use the so-called information and communication technologies (ICT). Likewise, in the professional practice, the activity of software development, requires teamwork and collaboration. By all this, it is necessary to consider these requirements in the training of students of computer science, from the beginning of their training.RESUMENEn este artículo se presentan los resultados obtenidos y conclusiones alcanzadas a través de la implementación de una estrategia de enseñanza y aprendizaje, diseñada para el desarrollo de las actividades de laboratorio de un primer curso de programación. La misma se basa en la aplicación del trabajo colaborativo usando un entorno de desarrollo, que combina algunas funcionalidades provistas por el entorno Moodle y un módulo que se integra al mismo, llamado Virtual Program-ming Lab (VPL). Los futuros profesionales de Sistemas, por su especificidad laboral, incluirán y utilizarán las denominadas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC). Así mismo, en el ejercicio profesional, la actividad de desarrollo del software, requiere del trabajo en equipo y en colaboración. Por todo esto, resulta necesario contemplar estos requerimientos en la formación de los alumnos de sistemas, desde los inicios de su formación. Contacto principal: [email protected]


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (13) ◽  
pp. 2901 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hossain ◽  
Georges ◽  
Rondeau ◽  
Divoux

There are all sort of indications that Internet usage will go only upwards, resulting in an increase in energy consumption and CO2 emissions. At the same time, a significant amount of this carbon footprint corresponds to the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector, with around one third being due to networking. In this paper we have approached the problem of green networking from the point of view of sustainability. Here, alongside energy-aware routing, we have also introduced pollution-aware routing with environmental metrics like carbon emission factor and non-renewable energy usage percentage. We have proposed an algorithm based on these three candidate-metrics. Our algorithm provides optimum data and control planes for three different metrics which regulate the usage of different routers and adapt the bandwidth of the links while giving the traffic demand requirements utmost priority. We have made a comparison between these three metrics in order to show their impact on greening routing. The results show that for a particular scenario, our pollution-aware routing algorithm can reduce 36% and 20% of CO2 emissions compared to shortest path first and energy-based solutions, respectively.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 591-606
Author(s):  
Mohammad Ali Fazeli, PhD ◽  
Azamossadat Hosseini, PhD ◽  
Farkhondeh Asadi, PhD ◽  
Hassan Haghighi, PhD

Introduction: Effective crisis management can reduce the costs and consequences of a crisis and has a significant impact on saving human lives in critical situations. Proper use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) can improve all crisis management phases and crisis communication cycles according to the needs of stakeholders. The purpose of this review article is to identify which ICTs have been used in effective crisis management and what managerial tasks they support.Method: A systematic review was conducted based on PRISMA protocol. The investigated articles that have been published in English were all indexed in PubMed, Science Direct, IEEE, Web of Science, and Google Scholar databases from 2005 to 2019. The keywords searched were “Crisis Management,” “Emergency Management,” “Information and Communication Technology,” and their synonyms.Results: A total of 1,703 articles were retrieved, and 81 articles that met the inclusion criteria were retained. In terms of content, there were 54 case studies/review articles, 38 proposals, and seven prototypes among which 18 case studies and proposals were the same. According to surveys, 18 ICT tools and technologies have been used in effective crisis management with the purpose of supporting managerial tasks such as situation assessment, decision-making, coordination/command and control, communication with the public, and supply of basic services in order to enable crisis management and logistics.Conclusion: This study showed that proper use of ICT can help crisis managers optimize their performance that will consequently result in effective crisis management and the reduction of casualties. In the crisis management cycle, several tools and technologies have been used for various purposes, however; some crisis managers’ tasks were still not taken into consideration sufficiently, and thus, some recommendations for further research in this field were provided.


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