Daniel Link, Kenny Meesters, Bernd Hellingrath, & Bartel A. Van De Walle. (2014). Reference task-based design of crisis management games. In and P.C. Shih. L. Plotnick M. S. P. S.R. Hiltz (Ed.), ISCRAM 2014 Conference Proceedings – 11th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 592–596). University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University.
Abstract: Serious games are an effective tool for giving players a hands-on, immersive experience of crisis situations. To simplify the design of such games while ensuring their relevance, we propose a design method that is based on reference tasks. The feasibility of this approach is demonstrated by the improved design of the serious game “Disaster in my Backyard” that has been played during ISCRAM Summer school 2013. The design incorporates humanitarian logistics, search-and-rescue and coordination tasks. We also present the lessons learned from this instantiation of the game and give an outlook towards future research, such as the evaluation of tools for crisis response and management through the use of serious games and reference tasks.
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David Paulus, Kenny Meesters, & Bartel Van de Walle. (2018). Turning data into action: supporting humanitarian field workers with open data. In Kees Boersma, & Brian Tomaszeski (Eds.), ISCRAM 2018 Conference Proceedings – 15th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 1030–1039). Rochester, NY (USA): Rochester Institute of Technology.
Abstract: In the aftermath of disasters, information is of the essence for humanitarian decision makers in the field. Their concrete information needs is highly context-influenced and often they find themselves unable to access the right information at the right time. We propose a novel ICT-based approach to address these information needs more accurately. First, we select a group of in-field decision makers and collect their concrete information needs in the disaster aftermath. We then review to what extent existing data and tools can already address these needs. We conclude that existing solutions fall short in meeting important information needs of the selected group. We describe the design of an information system prototype to address these gaps more accurately. We combine data of the International Aid Transparency Initiative and the Humanitarian Data Exchange to form the data-backend of our system. We describe our implementation approach and evaluation plan.
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David Paulus, Kenny Meesters, Gerdien de Vries, & Bartel Van de Walle. (2019). The reciprocity of data integration in disaster risk analysis. In Z. Franco, J. J. González, & J. H. Canós (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response And Management. Valencia, Spain: Iscram.
Abstract: Humanitarian organizations are increasingly challenged by the amount of data available to drive their decisions. Useful data can come from many sources, exists in different formats, and merging it into a basis for analysis and planning often exceeds organizations? capacities and resources. At the same time, affected communities? participation in decision making processes is often hindered by a lack of information and data literacy capacities within the communities. We describe a participatory disaster risk analysis project in the central Philippines where the community and a humanitarian NGO worked towards a joint understanding of disaster risks and coping capacities through data integration and IT-supported analysis. We present findings from workshops, focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews, showing the reciprocal effects of the collaborative work. While the community valued the systematically gathered and structured evidence that supported their own risk perceptions and advocacy efforts, the humanitarian NGO revisited established work practices for data collection for analysis and planning.
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David Wodak, & Kenny Meesters. (2021). How To Improve HO/TO's: An Exploratory Study on The Alignment Between Information, Technology And Crisis teams. In Anouck Adrot, Rob Grace, Kathleen Moore, & Christopher W. Zobel (Eds.), ISCRAM 2021 Conference Proceedings – 18th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 459–470). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: In the last decade, the number of crises has increased, and have become more complex. Crisis response does not only focus on rescue operations, or separate stages but rather it is an integrated and continuous process. During this continuous process, several handovers take place. A handover is an important, critical but challenging moment during a crisis, due to the organizational factors that influence the handover and the technology used to transfer information. Since these are crucial elements of a Crisis handover, it would indicate that the alignment between these factors could lead to the improvement of Crisis handovers. However, certain barriers resulted in a lack of alignment. An important barrier originates from the organizational processes. These have a lack of focus on which crisis managers are involved in the handover and thus create a lack of alignment between the systems and information used by various crisis teams.
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Grégoire Burel, Lara S. G. Piccolo, Kenny Meesters, & Harith Alani. (2017). DoRES -- A Three-tier Ontology for Modelling Crises in the Digital Age. In eds Aurélie Montarnal Matthieu Lauras Chihab Hanachi F. B. Tina Comes (Ed.), Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response And Management (pp. 834–845). Albi, France: Iscram.
Abstract: During emergency crises it is imperative to collect, organise, analyse and share critical information between individuals and humanitarian organisations. Although dierent models and platforms have been created for helping these particular issues, existing work tend to focus on only one or two of the previous matters. We propose the DoRES ontology for representing information sources, consolidating it into reports and then, representing event situation based on reports. Our approach is guided by the analysis of 1) the structure of a widely used situation awareness platform; 2) stakeholder interviews, and; 3) the structure of existing crisis datasets. Based on this, we extract 102 dierent competency questions that are then used for specifying and implementing the new three-tiers crisis model. We show that the model can successfully be used for mapping the 102 dierent competency questions to the classes, properties and relations of the implemented ontology.
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Hossein Baharmand, Kees Boersma, Kenny Meesters, Femke Mulder, & Jeroen Wolbers. (2016). A multidisciplinary perspective on supporting community disaster resilience in Nepal. In A. Tapia, P. Antunes, V.A. Bañuls, K. Moore, & J. Porto (Eds.), ISCRAM 2016 Conference Proceedings ? 13th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Rio de Janeiro, Brasil: Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Abstract: Fostering community resilience in the aftermath of a disaster constitutes a significant challenge and requires an adequate understanding of the community?s specific capabilities and vulnerabilities. We carried out a field study in Nepal as a multi-disciplinary research team that explored how the humanitarian response enabled community resilience after the devastating earthquakes. We explored three elements of resilience: persistence, adaptability and transformability by zooming in and out between the local community and humanitarian organizations operating at the national level. Our combined insights from three disciplines, social sciences, information management and logistics, show that humanitarian organizations operating in Nepal still primarily aimed to (re)build community resilience ?from above? instead of enabling communities to strengthen their own resilience in a bottom up way. In this paper we contend that fostering an inclusive and networked response has the potential to strengthen the adaptive capacity of humanitarian organizations and community groups and boost local resilience.
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Kenny Meesters, & Bartel A. Van De Walle. (2013). Disaster in my backyard: A serious game introduction to disaster information management. In J. Geldermann and T. Müller S. Fortier F. F. T. Comes (Ed.), ISCRAM 2013 Conference Proceedings – 10th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 145–150). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: Disaster exercises are intended to improve disaster responses effectiveness. Exercises exist in a wide variety, ranging from table-top scenarios to full-scale disaster simulations, offering participants different learning experiences. However these exercises can be overwhelming to newcomers, especially when involving large scale simulations, reducing the effectiveness of the learning experience. In order to make the learning experiences more effective to newcomers, researchers or professionals, a new exercise is proposed. This exercise, designed as a serious game, provides a new way to introduce people to the field of disaster management in general and information management in particular. The first version of the game was played during the 2012 ISCRAM summer school where it yielded positive reactions from both novice participants and experienced professionals.
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Kenny Meesters, & Bartel A. Van De Walle. (2013). Towards an impact evaluation framework for the collaborative information supply chain in humanitarian crisis response. In J. Geldermann and T. Müller S. Fortier F. F. T. Comes (Ed.), ISCRAM 2013 Conference Proceedings – 10th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 536–545). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: Emerging technologies provide opportunities for the humanitarian responders' community to enhance the effectiveness of their response to crisis situations. A part of this development can be contributed to a new type of information supply chains -driven by collaboration with digital, online communities- enabling organizations to make better informed decisions. However, how exactly and to what extend this collaboration impacts the decision making process is unknown. To improve these new information exchanges and the corresponding systems, an evaluation method is needed to assess the performance of these processes and systems. This paper builds on existing evaluation methods for information systems and design principles to propose such an impact evaluation framework. The proposed framework has been applied in a case study to demonstrate its potential to identify areas for further improvement in the (online) collaboration between information suppliers and users.
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Kenny Meesters, & Thijs van Beek. (2021). Towards a tailor-made modelling language for information flow setups in humanitarian crisis management. In Anouck Adrot, Rob Grace, Kathleen Moore, & Christopher W. Zobel (Eds.), ISCRAM 2021 Conference Proceedings – 18th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 448–458). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Over the years many different strategies, approaches and tools have been used in emergency response to connect information flows. In large-scale emergencies different tools, processes and structures are used to coordinate information. This is in part due to the differences in countries, emergencies, and local context, but also personal preferences, capabilities and resources play a role. Despite these differences, being able to compare and contrast various information structures, processes and systems would be beneficial to identify recurring structures and their performance. Modelling languages have been used in many other contexts to support these practices of describing, analyzing and comparing processes. This research examines the need and potential of a tailored modelling language to visualize information flow setups. In this study an initial set of requirements is developed from a literature study and further validated with expert in-depth interview. These requirements are compared with existing modelling languages to identify key building blocks of the language. The results provide key considerations for the development of a new modelling language to describe information flows in a consistent and structured manner.
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Kenny Meesters, Vittorio Nespeca, & Tina Comes. (2019). Designing Disaster Information Management Systems 2.0: Connecting communities and responders. In Z. Franco, J. J. González, & J. H. Canós (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response And Management. Valencia, Spain: Iscram.
Abstract: Information and supporting information systems is a key element in an effective emergency response. From
creating situational awareness to informed decision making, information enables responders to optimize their
decisions and operations. Today, with the increased availability of information technology around the globe, a
new active player in the field of information management is emerging as communities are becoming increasingly
active in the field of information gathering, analyzing and sharing.
However, communities may have specific requirements and approaches to using information systems in crisis
situations. Moreover, connecting information systems between communities and responder pose specific
challenges due to the different information needs, capacities and incentives to use them. In this paper we build on
the DERMIS premises and explore through a case study if and how these principles apply to inclusive information
systems. We present the initial findings of this work of designing information systems involving both communities
and formal responders.
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Leon Derczynski, Kenny Meesters, Kalina Bontcheva, & Diana Maynard. (2018). Helping Crisis Responders Find the Informative Needle in the Tweet Haystack. In Kees Boersma, & Brian Tomaszeski (Eds.), ISCRAM 2018 Conference Proceedings – 15th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 649–662). Rochester, NY (USA): Rochester Institute of Technology.
Abstract: Crisis responders are increasingly using social media, data and other digital sources of information to build a situational understanding of a crisis situation in order to design an effective response. However with the increased availability of such data, the challenge of identifying relevant information from it also increases. This paper presents a successful automatic approach to handling this problem. Messages are filtered for informativeness based on a definition of the concept drawn from prior research and crisis response experts. Informative messages are tagged for actionable data – for example, people in need, threats to rescue efforts, changes in environment, and so on. In all, eight categories of actionability are identified. The two components – informativeness and actionability classification – are packaged together as an openly-available tool called Emina (Emergent Informativeness and Actionability).
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Stephan Weijman, & Kenny Meesters. (2020). Shifting Control and Trust: Exploring Implications of Introducing Delegated Decision Support Systems. In Amanda Hughes, Fiona McNeill, & Christopher W. Zobel (Eds.), ISCRAM 2020 Conference Proceedings – 17th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 285–294). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Increased information access and more intelligent information systems enable more operators in an organization to autonomously make decisions. These delegated decision-making opportunities play an important role during critical events, as operators -such as emergency teams and responders- can work independently and rely less on a centralized decision-making structure. Moreover, the operators' perceived level of trust increases while also limiting the coordinators' perceived control. In this paper, we examine the influence of such systems on the shift in perceived control and empowerment for both operators and commanders. In our experiments, conducted at the Royal Netherlands Air Force, we found that the introduction of these systems indeed affects perceived control and empowerment, specifically as perceived by the coordinator. These factors will play an important role in the effective use of such systems and their transformative effect on an organization. Especially considering the ongoing technical and organizational developments in crisis information management.
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Vittorio Nespeca, Kenny Meesters, & Tina Comes. (2018). Evaluating Platforms for Community Sense-making: Using the Case of the Kenyan Elections. In Kees Boersma, & Brian Tomaszeski (Eds.), ISCRAM 2018 Conference Proceedings – 15th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 924–934). Rochester, NY (USA): Rochester Institute of Technology.
Abstract: The profusion of information technology has created new possibilities for local communities to self-organize and respond to disruptive events. Along with the opportunities, there is also a series of challenges that need to be addressed in order to improve societal resilience. One of these challenges is to make sense of the continuous stream of information to create a coherent understanding and improve coordination. The research presented in this paper focuses on the socio-technical requirements of IT platforms that support sense-making and coordination. Using a comprehensive evaluation exercise based on real data from the 2017 Kenyan elections, we examine the development, workflows and use of this shared situational awareness in a group decision making process. In this manner, we identify requirements for resilience platforms and identify further research directions.
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