A Unified Localizable Emergency Events Scale

Managers of emergencies face challenges of complexity, uncertainty, and unpredictably. Triadic constraints imply requisite parsimony in describing the essence of the emergency, its magnitude and direction of development. Linguistic separation increases as the crisis management organization is more complex and made up of diverse constituents. Therefore, a standard objective emergency scale is vital to quantify and unambiguously communicate the nature of any emergency. Previous work laid the foundations for an objective measurable emergency event scale. This article proposes a unified emergency scale based on a mathematical model, accompanied by several examples spanning local to national events.

Multilingual Crisis Knowledge Representation

In a crisis, the problem of the lack of a shared platform or similar communication methods among the collaborators usually arises within a few hours. While a crisis requires rapid response of emergency management factors, ontology is generally represented in a static manner. Therefore, an adaptive ontology for crisis knowledge representation is needed to assist in coordinating relief efforts in different crisis situations. This chapter describes a method of ontology modeling that modifies the ontology in real time during a crisis according to the crisis surroundings. The method is based on modeling a basic predefined multilingual ontology while allowing the expansion of the ontology according to the crisis circumstances and the addition of other languages within the crisis time limitations. An example of ontology use based on a sample Katrina crisis blog is presented. Motivation for multilingual ontology use is supplied by the Boxing Day tsunami crisis.

Emergency Messaging to General Public via Public Wireless Networks

Warnings to the broad population in an emergency situation, irrespective of location and condition, are a public policy responsibility. Public wireless networks offer now the opportunity to deliver emergency warnings in this way with explanations, because in many countries, the mobile penetration rates and coverage are higher than any other access form. This chapter summarizes the analysis of the selection process between short messaging services (SMS) and Cell Broadcast (CB) messaging in the context of Denmark based on end user requirements, stakeholder roles and case-based analysis. It demonstrates the many technical, cost-benefit, and other trade-offs needed in supporting the population now with a dependable and wide-spread technology. This research is the basis for a national policy.

Incident Command Situation Assessment Utilizing Video Feeds from UAVs

Past experience has shown that introducing new Information Technologies can have unintended and undesirable consequences, such as new forms of errors and a narrowing of data search activities. Eight Incident Commanders (ICs) took part in a simulated disaster response exercise to determine how the availability of real-time image feeds from a UAV impact on situation assessment and decision-making. The exercise simulated the video feed from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that allows incident command centers to monitor developments at a crisis site. The results showed that information from the video image channel dominated information available from other channels or in other forms. Nearly all of the ICs failed to detect important changes in the situation that were not captured in the imaging channel but that were available via other, more traditional data sources. The dominance of the image feed resulted in ICs narrowing their data search activities and reducing cross-checking across diverse data sources. This study confirms anecdotal reports that users can over-rely on video feeds from UAVs.

Only Connect

The introduction of information systems and the humanitarian reform process are both having a tremendous impact on the way that humanitarian assistance is delivered – yet the two processes are extremely weakly connected. As a result, the humanitarian community is failing to realise the potential that information technology has to support key aspects of the reform process, but also failing to recognise that technology is likely to render many of the discussions around reform moot. The balance of knowledge is shifting towards those affected by disaster, implying that they will become increasingly empowered by technology to more effectively cope with the impact of those disasters. Traditional actors in the humanitarian community must incorporate these realities into its own processes or risk being overtaken by newer and more agile institutions which may not be so concerned with humanitarian principles.

The Past as the Future of Emergency Preparedness and Management

Emergency preparedness, planning, and response suffer from shortcomings that impede the potential for effectiveness. In this article, we provide an overview of Emergency Preparedness and Management that is based upon our research, including insights into the shortcomings of current practices, a discussion of relevant theories (e.g., High Reliability Organizations, muddling through) and recommendations to promote more effective planning, management, and response. Our recommendations include system support for the principles of High Reliability Organizations and muddling through, rethinking risk analysis to have a longer-term view and reflect more than just monetary loss, creating ways to better inform and involve the public, and encouraging collaboration and collective intelligence through such means as a dynamic Delphi voting system.

Knowledge Management in Support of Crisis Response

Most organizations face difficult challenges in managing knowledge for crisis response, but it is crucial for response effectiveness that such challenges be overcome. Organizational members must share the knowledge needed to plan for emergencies. They also must be able during an emergency to access relevant plans and communicate about their responses to it. This article examines the role and relevance of knowledge management (and knowledge management systems therein) in support of crisis response. We begin by discussing what knowledge management and crisis response mean. We move on to suggest why crisis response efforts within an organizational context, might benefit from knowledge management initiatives. Specific examples of how knowledge management efforts have supported crisis response in the past are then presented. We end by offering researchers with some suggestions for future research work in light of this subject domain.

Information Seeking and Retrieval Service for Crisis Response

Crisis response involves handling information intensive processes, and coordination of large quantities of information from and for different relief-response organizations. The information needs and responses of such organizations are closely related to the situations and roles these organizations are involved during a crisis relief-response process. The information seeking and retrieval processes associated with crisis situations influence the affectivity of response vigor and the coordination of relief-response activities. To provide an effective solution for a European Main Port’s crisis response needs, a role-based situation-aware information seeking and retrieval conceptual framework is formulated. The conceptual framework, the design approach, and the implementation in a prototype are presented as an approach to design future crisis response for information seeking and retrieval services.

Resilient Emergency Response

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.

When and How (Not) to Trust It?

In this article we use the formative evaluation of a prototype ‘assembly’ of pervasive computing technologies to specify design implications for emergency virtual teamwork tools. The prototype assembly, called “Overview”, was implemented in collaboration with police, fire and medical emergency services as part of the real life event management during the Tall Ships’ Races 2007 in Denmark. We describe how the emergency teams used the technologies for collaboration between distributed colleagues, to produce shared situation awareness, to manage efforts and resources and respond to minor emergencies. Trust in technology is a key need virtual teams identify in their endeavours to dovetail innovative technologies into emergency work. We show how practices of working up trust are supported by the PalCom open architecture (which was used to build Overview), and delineate design guidelines to enable the productive integration of pervasive computing.