Abstract: In complex emergencies, civil and military organizations often find themselves being partners in an international effort aimed at peace keeping, humanitarian relief, and development support. Civil and military partners need to exchange information and to cooperate as required. This assumes effective and efficient Civil-Military Interaction (CMI). However, CMI research literature shows that, in practice, this is far from a reality. In particular, our research indicates that deficiencies in knowledge processes and knowledge management within international civil and military organizations contribute to the causes of ineffective and inefficient CMI. Our research aims to investigate the feasibility of developing technical solutions exploiting knowledge engineering, to support fieldworkers in overcoming these CMI problems. As a first step, this paper introduces a Conceptual Framework (CF) that captures reference models of the CMI domain. The CF has been developed to analyze CMI problems and underlying KM deficiencies. It is being illustrated, explored and validated using real-world case studies.

Abstract: The effectiveness of 'close to reality' training simulations is due to the fact that they provide a sense of immersion and allow several participants to interact naturally. However, they are expensive, time-consuming, difficult to organise and have a limited scope. We present a virtual reality training simulator which overcomes these disadvantages. We describe the approach and methodology and conclude with a discussion of the most crucial challenges when developing such a system. In this paper we would like to introduce the notion of cultural technologies which produce a sense of social as well as cultural immersion. We will discuss the main ingredients of such an immersion, in particular the notion of situated virtual interaction (how interactions in a virtual world can be comparable with human interactions in real situations). We also discuss on the role of interfaces (real time motion capture) and emotional expression in the design of such environments. © Proceedings ISCRAM 2004.

Abstract: The first hours after a disaster are essential to minimizing the loss of life. The chance for survival in the debris of a collapsed building for example decreases considerably after 72 hours. However the available information in the first hours after a disaster is limited, uncertain and dynamically changing. A goal in the development of the Disaster Management Tool (DMT) was to support the management of this situation. Its module DMT-EOC specifically deals with problems of the members in an emergency operation centre (EOC) by providing a training environment for computer based table top exercises and assistance during earthquake disasters. The system is based on a flexible and extendible architecture that integrates different concepts and programming interfaces. It contains a simulation for training exercises and the evaluation of decisions during disaster response. A decision support implemented as a multi-agent system (MAS) combines operation research approaches and rule-base evaluation for advice giving and criticising user decisions. The user interface is based on a workflow model which mixes naturalistic with analytic decision-making. The paper gives an overview of the models behind the system components, describes their implementation, and the testing of the resulting system.

Abstract: An experimental automated dialogue system that plays the role of a crisis hotline dispatcher is currently developed. Besides controlling the communication flow, this system is able to retrieve information about crisis situations from user's input. It offers a natural user interaction by the ability to perceive and respond to human emotions. The system has an emotion recognizer that is able to recognize the emotional loading from user's linguistic content. The recognizer uses a database that contains selected keywords on a 2D “arousal” and “valence” scale. The output of the system provides not only the information about the user's emotional state but also an indication of the urgency of his/her information regarding to crisis. The dialogue system is able to start a user friendly dialogue, taking care of the content, context and emotional loading of user's utterances.

Abstract: This paper is a position paper, presenting an original but very anticipative and mainly imaginative vision of the evolution of the crisis management domain. After analyzing the options to make the past evolutions of that domain somehow explainable (mainly by analyzing the data of all the articles of the last fifteen editions of the ISCRAM conference), the paper aims at providing a framework to assess and evaluate the maturity of the domain of crisis management. Moreover, this framework is also used to tentatively infer some future evolutions and some directions that could be relevant, dangerous, tricky or of great benefit for the crisis management domain. These future trends are mainly based on the current maturity of crisis management (according to the proposed framework) and current or future influential practices, technologies or threats. It will be necessary to wait for fifteen years to see if these bets should be considered as accurate.

Abstract: Networking in the event of disasters requires new hybrid wireless architectures such as Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). Provisioning Quality of Service (QoS) in such networks which are quickly deployed during emergencies demand radical solutions. In this paper, we provide a new QoS approach for voice calls over a wireless mesh networks during emergency situations. According to our scheme, the contention and back-off parameters are modified based on the emotion content in the voice streams. This paper also looks at methods for detecting emotion from an incoming voice call using the speech signal. The issues of interest in such situations are whether the caller is in a state of extreme panic, moderate panic, or in a normal state of behavior. The communication network behavior should be modified to provide differentiated QoS for calls based on the degree of emotion. We use several features extracted from the speech signal like the range of pitch variation, energy in the critical bark band, range of the first three formant variations, and speaking rate among others to discriminate between the three emotional states. At the back end the Gaussian mixture modeling techniques is used to model the three emotional states of the speaker. Since a large number of features increase the computational complexity and time, a feature selection technique is employed based on the Bhattacharya distance, to select the set of features that give maximum discrimination between the classes. These set of features are employed to simulate an emotion recognition system. The results indicate a promising emotion detection rate for the three emotions. We also present the early results on detecting the emotion content in the speech and using this in the MAC layer differentiated QoS provisioning scheme. Our scheme provides an end-to-end delay performance improvement for panicked calls as high as 60% compared to normal calls.

Abstract: Based on a state of the art analysis of exercise classifications and empirical findings from an Action Research approach this paper presents a classification for command post exercises, that addresses identified shortcomings concerning practical support for goal-achievement and evaluation in exercise design. The authors' classification distinguishes between Training, Test and Experimentation Exercises, which are characterized by the following aspects: Goal and purpose of exercise, participants, evaluation content and output, evaluation methodology, role of observers, scenario complexity, potential for organizational innovation and results. The classification was developed in an Action Research approach with an empirical basis of four command post exercises. Results indicate high benefit for exercises and the approach is perceived rather simple, easy to understand and to apply.

Abstract: Crucial to improving the management of emergency situations is the definition of suitable Emergency Plans and training of participants in the application of such plans. In order to design a good Emergency Plan, experts from different areas need to work collaboratively to identify all the events and the relationships among such events. The main purpose of this project is to study different information technology techniques that can be used in the elaboration of and training for Emergency Plans, based on the use of scenarios. The use of such techniques will support collaborative development of Emergency Plans, the use of rich formats that provide different perspectives on a plan, the exportation and sharing of plans in order to increase their evolution and improvement, the instruction of participants, as well as better interaction, participation and exchange of knowledge. Key aspects of the plans for this recently begun project are described in this paper.

Abstract: When a forest fire occurs, the commander cannot obtain information in time, and the rescue command is like groping in the dark. In order to solve the problem, this research establishes a real-time forest fire display system based on UAV and GIS. The UAV is equipped with visible light and thermal imaging cameras to transmit back forest fire scenes in real time. Based on GIS, the system can extract the boundary of the fire field through image processing and 3D modeling technology, and display various forest fire information on the screen. Through image processing and 3D modeling technology, the boundary of the fire field can be extracted and displayed on the screen. We conducted several experiments to test the accuracy and the reliability of the system. The result shows that the accuracy, reliability and real-time capability can be guaranteed in small-scale forest fires.

Abstract: Building construction and building layout represent two key critical pieces of information for a fire suppression operation. However, fireground incident commanders (FGCs) frequently do not have access to critical, updated information about a structure, including details that could potentially support more effective response. This gap in the information pipeline has led to significant injuries and fatalities for both civilians and first responders. Towards this end, this paper focuses on evaluating the efficacy of a user interface prototype for supporting decision-making during a simulated commercial structure fire. Sixty-four firefighters (n = 64) from North America participated in this study. Overall, there were no statistical differences in the performance of the firefighters between the two experimental conditions (2D vs. 3D). This study provides preliminary support for the use of 3D models in pre-incident planning practices. More importantly, this initial data serves as a baseline for the development of evidence-based standards for displaying pre-incident planning information to FGCs digitally.

Abstract: Social media plays a vital role as a communication source during large-scale disasters. The unstructured and informal nature of such short individual posts makes it difficult to extract useful information, often due to a lack of additional context. The potential of social media threads– sequences of posts– has not been explored as a source of adding context and more information to the initiating post. In this research, we explored Twitter threads as an information source and developed an information extraction model capable of extracting relevant information from threads posted during disasters. We used a crowdsourcing platform to determine whether a thread adds more information to the initial tweet and defined disaster-related information present in these threads into six themes– event reporting, location, time, intensity, casualty and damage reports, and help calls. For these themes, we created the respective thematic lexicons from WordNet. Moreover, we developed and compared four information extraction models trained on GloVe, word2vec, bag-of-words, and thematic bag-of-words to extract and summarize the most critical information from the threads. Our results reveal that 70 percent of all threads add information to the initiating post for various disaster-related themes. Furthermore, the thematic bag-of-words information extraction model outperforms the other algorithms and models for preserving the highest number of disaster-related themes.

Abstract: The goal of the paper is to discuss the framework for an interdisciplinary human-computer interactive technology that facilitates information and resource exchange and forms core groups for crisis management. The social networks discussed here are designed to incorporate local knowledge and participation and to foster institutional and academic ties by modeling interrelationships among global communities and exploring policy options. Social interactions between individuals and organizations are explored especially in situations when directed responses are helpful in predicting the complex interplay between social, political, and technological systems and practices that result in a transfer of information and resources in disaster situations. In the future, such networks shall identify patterns through which groups interact in responding to critical issues and shall incorporate more complicated actions by individuals and organizations allowing them to move away from a rigid path to manage disasters via the most situationally appropriate routes.

Abstract: Emergency plans are developed to serve as a basis for response actions required in real situations. However, plan development is not an easy task and usually relies on complex processes. Due to the uncertainty of emergencies, one of the most challenging tasks is the development of possible courses of action. To deal with this uncertainty, we propose the use of scenario techniques for the definition of courses of action. Specifically, we adopt the use of CIA-ISM scenario technique for structuring the chain of events that can occur in a crisis that would support planning teams to develop courses of action. A practical application of the methodology has been successfully conducted by an emergency planning team in Brazil. The practical application of the CIA-ISM process was supported by a software artifact called CAEPlan. Lessons learned about the empirical application of both the methodology and the software artifact are presented.