Josine Van De Ven, & Martijn Neef. (2006). A critical thinking environment for crisis response. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 223–229). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Building up a proper understanding of a large-scale incident is an important and difficult process. We envision a working environment for decision makers in crisis management situations that allows them to work with information in various ways. That will stimulate them to think critically in processing the information they receive-All in support of rapid sensemaking and decision making. To realize this ambition, we combine various technologies into an integrated support concept called the Critical Thinking Environment (CTE), aimed at tackling critical issues in sensemaking.
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Willem Van Santen, Catholijn M. Jonker, & Niek Wijngaards. (2009). Crisis decision making through a shared integrative negotiation mental model. In S. J. J. Landgren (Ed.), ISCRAM 2009 – 6th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management: Boundary Spanning Initiatives and New Perspectives. Gothenburg: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: Decision making during crises takes place in (multi-agency) teams, in a bureaucratic political context. As a result, the common notion that during crises decision making should be done in line with a Command & Control structure is invalid. This paper shows that the best way for crisis decision making teams in a bureaucratic political context is to follow an integrative negotiation approach as the shared mental model of decision making. This conclusion is based on an analysis of crisis decision making by teams in a bureaucratic political context. First of all this explains why in a bureaucratic political context the Command & Control adage does not hold. Secondly, this paper motivates why crisis decision making in such context can be seen as a negotiation process. Further analysis of the given context shows that an assertive and cooperative approach suits crisis decision making best.
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Maarten Van Someren, Niels Netten, Vanessa Evers, Henriette Cramer, Robert De Hoog, & Guido Bruinsma. (2005). A trainable information distribution system to support crisis management. In B. C. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2005 – 2nd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 203–206). Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Crisis response and management involve multiple collaborative actors who execute tasks in a dynamic setting. For the effectiveness of collaboration and crisis fighting it is essential that all actors have access to relevant information necessary for their tasks. Managing the information flow, i.e. presenting the right information to the right person at the right time, is of great importance. However, the complexity of a crisis event makes it very difficult to keep an overview of all ongoing activities and information flow within the entire crisis environment. In this paper we address the problem of selecting and distributing information to users as a function of their characteristics, tasks and the state of their workflows in a collaborative setting. In particular, we propose a trainable system for information distribution that will be able to support the dynamic nature of collaborative processes and provide users with task-relevant information. We expect that this will reduce problems due to information overload and will lead to more effective collaboration between all actors in the crisis management environment.
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Beth Veinott, Gary L. Klein, & Sterling Wiggins. (2010). Evaluating the effectiveness of the PreMortem technique on plan confidence. In C. Zobel B. T. S. French (Ed.), ISCRAM 2010 – 7th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management: Defining Crisis Management 3.0, Proceedings. Seattle, WA: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: One problem affecting crisis management planning teams is overconfidence- An inflated belief that a plan will be successful. In this paper we compared the effect of several different methods for reducing individual team member confidence levels and compared each to a baseline control condition. One hundred and seventy-eight people participated in one of five conditions to evaluate an H1N1 flu epidemic plan in a university context. Over the course of evaluating the plan, participants provided several ratings of confidence in the plan's success and their understanding. We compared several techniques commonly used, such as critique, Pro/Cons generation, Cons only generation and a newer technique, PreMortem, to a baseline condition. The Pro/Cons generation, Cons only generation and the PreMortem technique all reliably reduced confidence levels more than baseline condition. Furthermore, the Premortem method, imagining that a plan has failed and then generating reasons to explain why, reliably reduced confidence more than each of the other conditions, and therefore can be a useful tool for combating overconfidence in crisis management planning. We discuss the results in the context of sensemaking and decision making theory.
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Eelco Vriezekolk, Roel Wieringa, & Sandro Etalle. (2011). A new method to assess telecom service availability risks. In E. Portela L. S. M.A. Santos (Ed.), 8th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management: From Early-Warning Systems to Preparedness and Training, ISCRAM 2011. Lisbon: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: Protection of society against natural and man-made disasters is high on the societal and political agenda. Effective crisis management is more important than ever. Nowadays, crisis organisations depend crucially on reliable telecom services, and unexpected failure of telecommunication may have serious consequences. In order not to be caught unprepared, crisis organisations should therefore perform a risk assessment on telecom availability. Unfortunately, assessment of availability risks of modern, multi-operator telecom services is difficult; information sources are unreliable, and the relevant information is uncertain and difficult to obtain. This paper describes some of these difficulties, as well as the requirements of availability risk assessment methods for crisis telecommunication services. The paper outlines a new method that can be applied without requiring full knowledge of the physical layout of the telecom infrastructure. This new method relies on telecom service diagrams as a tool for risk analysis and to facilitate dialogue among the analysts.
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Maximilian Walther, Sven Schaust, & Michael Kaisser. (2013). Social media-based event detection for crisis management in the al za'atari refugee camp. 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. 927–928). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: Social Media data allows for profound analyses of user-generated content in order to predict or manage disasters and crisis situations. In this paper, we present an analysis of tweets from and about Al Za'atari, a refugee camp in Jordan close to the Syrian border. Our results are based on the analysis of location-tagged tweets by our “Avalanche” system in order to support an accurate situational awareness picture for on-site and off-site operators from relief organizations on evolving events and challenges.
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Hayley Watson, & Rachel L. Finn. (2014). Social media and the 2013 UK heat wave: Opportunities and challenges for future events. 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. 757–761). University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University.
Abstract: Studies examining the role of social media (SM) use in a crisis often examine the use of SM following a largescale crisis requiring an immediate response. In contrast, this working paper examines the usefulness of SM during an extended crisis, in the form of a heat wave. Authors use the 2013 UK heat wave as a case study to examine how SM was used by different stakeholders during the event, what function(s) SM had, how it was engaged with by the online community and accordingly, what value it contributed to crisis management activities. Findings show that ultimately the nature of the crisis, particularly in relation to populations who are most likely to be vulnerable to its effects, plays an integral role to the value of SM in preparation and response activities.
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Asa Weinholt, & Tobias Andersson Granberg. (2013). Evaluation of enhanced collaboration between fire and rescue services and security officers. 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. 735–740). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: The hypothesis of this study is that collaboration between fire and rescue services and new actors, with basic rescue skills, might be a cost effective way to improve emergency response. Interview studies of collaborations between fire and rescue services and security officers in three Swedish municipalities are presented. Seven semi-structured interviews are conducted with representatives from the security officer companies, the fire and rescue services and security managers at the municipalities. The method used to evaluate the collaborations quantitatively is Cost-benefit analysis. The collaborations have positive economic effects for society that most likely outweighs the costs. There also exist several external effects that are not possible to value monetarily, but that represent positive values for society. The results and their generalizability are discussed, as well as the possibility for these new collaborations to improve crisis management.
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Connie White, Murray Turoff, & Starr Roxanne Hiltz. (2010). A real time online Delphi Decision System, V 2.0: Crisis management support during extreme events. In C. Zobel B. T. S. French (Ed.), ISCRAM 2010 – 7th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management: Defining Crisis Management 3.0, Proceedings. Seattle, WA: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: The Delphi Decision Maker system has been designed to support the decision making needs of crisis managers, considering factors such as stress, time pressure, information overload, and uncertainty. It has been built as a module for the Sahana Disaster Management system, a free and open source system. The Design Science research paradigm was used in an iterative development process. Triangulation was employed in the evaluation, analyzing the system against the research questions using both qualitative and quantitative statistics as well as proof of concept. Modifications need to be made for real world use. A second version of the system is under development. Research findings and future research are outlined in this work in progress.
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Torben Wiedenhöfer, Christian Reuter, Benedikt Ley, & Volkmar Pipek. (2011). Inter-organizational crisis management infrastructures for electrical power breakdowns. In E. Portela L. S. M.A. Santos (Ed.), 8th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management: From Early-Warning Systems to Preparedness and Training, ISCRAM 2011. Lisbon: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: Major electricity breakdowns like the Northeast Blackout (USA) in 2003 or the blackout in most parts of Western Europe in 2005, have shown the fundamental role of electricity in our everyday life. The experiences of these accidents show that power suppliers, firefighters, police, county administration and citizens face multifarious challenges in inter-organizational communication, information and coordination processes during coping and recovery work. In this work-in-progress paper we describe early research dealing with inter-organizational issues in emergency management (EM). We are mainly focusing on supporting social practices in inter-organizational EM, for example collaborative interpretation of emergency situations, ad-hoc coordination or supporting citizen communication and helping routines. Identified from our experiences from related projects, discussions and literature studies, we suggest potential questions and future topics in user-driven software engineering processes for EM and domain specific problems, such as supporting citizen participation, coping with information uncertainties and quality variations or enhancing inter-organizational learning.
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Don J.M. Willems, & Louis Vuurpijl. (2007). Designing interactive maps for crisis management. In K. Nieuwenhuis P. B. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Intelligent Human Computer Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM 2007 Academic Proceedings Papers (pp. 159–166). Delft: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of pen input recognition systems that are suited for so-called interactive maps. Such systems provide the possibility to enter handwriting, drawings, sketches and other modes of pen input. Typically, interactive maps are used to annotate objects or mark situations that are depicted on the display of video walls, handhelds, PDAs, or tablet PCs. Our research explores the possibility of employing interactive maps for crisis management systems, which require robust and effective communication of, e.g., the location of objects, the kind of incidents, or the indication of route alternatives. The design process described here is a mix of “best practices” for building perceptive systems, combining research in pattern recognition, human factors, and human-computer interaction. Using this approach, comprising data collection and annotation, feature extraction, and the design of domain-specific recognition technology, a decrease in error rates is achieved from 9.3% to 4.0%.
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Jean-Luc Wybo. (2006). Improving resilience of organizations by increasing mutual knowledge of stakeholders. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 540–546). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Managing accidents and crisis is a complex task, which is achieved by a large number of stakeholders. In order to identify appropriate responses to risk-prone situations, a classification in two categories has been proposed: risks of damage and risks of crisis (Wybo 2004). Risks of damage correspond to emergency management procedures and plans. Risks of crisis correspond to situations that escape from planning because of the overflow of the organization. Resilience of organizations is defined as their ability to resist to chaos and to maintain the situation under control. From the analysis of a large number of emergencies and crises caused by industrial and natural hazards, we try to identify what conditions increase the resilience of organizations. They have in common to increase the mutual knowledge of stakeholders about their strategies and roles and about the development of the situation.
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Xiaodan Yu, & Deepak Khazanchi. (2015). Patterns of Information Technology (IT) Adaptation in Building Shared Mental Models for Crisis Management Teams. In L. Palen, M. Buscher, T. Comes, & A. Hughes (Eds.), ISCRAM 2015 Conference Proceedings ? 12th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Kristiansand, Norway: University of Agder (UiA).
Abstract: One of the essential tasks of crisis management is to develop shared mental models (SMM) among teams and members about the crisis at hand, i.e. shared understanding of the task, process, technology and the teams. This is essential for developing an effective crisis management strategy. In this paper we draw lessons from our studies of distributed teams and their adaptation of IT capabilities to impact shared understanding. In particular, we discuss how patterns of the interplay between IT adaptation and SMM development have implications for crisis management teams.
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Xiaoyong Ni, Hong Huang, Wenxuan Dong, Chao Chen, Boni Su, & Anying Chen. (2021). Scenario Prediction and Crisis Management for Rain-induced Waterlogging Based on High-precision Simulation. 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. 159–173). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Many cities, especially those in developing countries, are not well prepared for the devastating disaster of exceptional rain-induced waterlogging caused by extreme rainfall. This paper proposes a waterlogging scenario prediction and crisis management method for such kind of extreme rainfall conditions based on high-precision waterlogging simulation. A typical urban region in Beijing, China is selected as the study area in this paper. High-precision and full-scale data in the study area requested for the waterlogging simulation are introduced. The simulation results show that the study area is still vulnerable to extreme rainfall and the subsequent waterlogging. The waterlogging situation is much more severe with the increase of the return period of rainfall. This study offers a good reference for the relevant government departments to make effective policy and take pointed response to the waterlogging problem.
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Yohann Chasseray, Anne-Marie Barthe-Delanoë, Stéphane Négny, & Jean-Marc Le Lann. (2021). Automated unsupervised ontology population system applied to crisis management domain. 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. 968–981). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: As crisis are complex systems, providing an accurate response to an ongoing crisis is not possible without ensuring situational awareness. The ongoing works around knowledge management and ontologies provide relevant and machine readable structures towards situational awareness and context understanding. Many metamodels, that can be derived into ontologies, supporting the collect and organization of crucial information for Decision Support Systems have been designed and are now used on specific cases. The next challenge into crisis management is to provide tools that can process an automated population of these metamodels/ontologies. The aim of this paper is to present a strategy to extract concept-instance relations in order to feed crisis management ontologies. The presented system is based on a previously proposed generic metamodel for information extraction and is applied in this paper to three different case studies representing three different crisis namely Ebola sanitarian crisis, Fukushima nuclear crisis and Hurricane Katrina natural disaster.
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Završnik, J., Vošner, H. B. žun, & Kokol, P. (2023). Pandemic crisis management: The EU project STAMINA. In Jaziar Radianti, Ioannis Dokas, Nicolas Lalone, & Deepak Khazanchi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International ISCRAM Conference (p. 1070). Omaha, USA: University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Abstract: Pandemics, as COVID-19 showed, can have the potential to result in serious global health threats and crises. Management of such kind of crisis presents a serious challenge due to the number of affected people, differences in legal, administrative, health procedures, political cultures, and the lack of smart interconnected, and compatible digitalized software tolls. The aim of the STAMINA project, sponsored by EU, was to overcome the above challenges and support efficient and effective pandemic management by providing Artificial intelligence-based decision-support technology which could successfully operate at a regional, national, and global level. The project targeted three stages of the emergency management cycle: Prediction, Preparedness, and Response. The STAMINA solution provides national planners, regional crisis management agencies, first responders, and citizens with new tools as well as a clear guide to how they can be used in line with international standards and legislation.
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Nan Zhang, Clare Bayley, & Simon French. (2008). Use of web-based group decision support for crisis management. In B. V. de W. F. Fiedrich (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2008 – 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 55–58). Washington, DC: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: Web-based group decision support systems (wGDSS) are becoming more common in organizations. In this paper, we provide a review and critique of the literature on wGDSS, raising a number of issues that need addressing. Then we report on a small scale experiment using Groupsystems ThinkTank to manage an issue to do with food safety. We also describe how we propose to use ThinkTank in a crisis situation.
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Andrea Zielinski, & Ulrich Bügel. (2012). Multilingual analysis of twitter news in support of mass emergency events. In Z.Franco J. R. L. Rothkrantz (Ed.), ISCRAM 2012 Conference Proceedings – 9th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Vancouver, BC: Simon Fraser University.
Abstract: Social media are increasingly becoming a source for event-based early warning systems in the sense that they can help to detect natural disasters and support crisis management during or after disasters. In this work-in-progress paper we study the problems of analyzing multilingual twitter feeds for emergency events. The present work focuses on English as “lingua franca” and on under-resourced Mediterranean languages in endangered zones, particularly Turkey, Greece, and Romania Generally, as local civil protection authorities and the population are likely to respond in their native language. We investigated ten earthquake events and defined four language-specific classifiers that can be used to detect earthquakes by filtering out irrelevant messages that do not relate to the event. The final goal is to extend this work to more Mediterranean languages and to classify and extract relevant information from tweets, translating the main keywords into English. Preliminary results indicate that such a filter has the potential to confirm forecast parameters of tsunami affecting coastal areas where no tide gauges exist and could be integrated into seismographic sensor networks. © 2012 ISCRAM.
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Zijun Long, & Richard Mccreadie. (2021). Automated Crisis Content Categorization for COVID-19 Tweet Streams. 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. 667–678). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Social media platforms, like Twitter, are increasingly used by billions of people internationally to share information. As such, these platforms contain vast volumes of real-time multimedia content about the world, which could be invaluable for a range of tasks such as incident tracking, damage estimation during disasters, insurance risk estimation, and more. By mining this real-time data, there are substantial economic benefits, as well as opportunities to save lives. Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic is attacking societies at an unprecedented speed and scale, forming an important use-case for social media analysis. However, the amount of information during such crisis events is vast and information normally exists in unstructured and multiple formats, making manual analysis very time consuming. Hence, in this paper, we examine how to extract valuable information from tweets related to COVID-19 automatically. For 12 geographical locations, we experiment with supervised approaches for labelling tweets into 7 crisis categories, as well as investigated automatic priority estimation, using both classical and deep learned approaches. Through evaluation using the TREC-IS 2020 COVID-19 datasets, we demonstrated that effective automatic labelling for this task is possible with an average of 61% F1 performance across crisis categories, while also analysing key factors that affect model performance and model generalizability across locations.
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Zijun Long, & Richard McCreadie. (2022). Is Multi-Modal Data Key for Crisis Content Categorization on Social Media? In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 1068–1080). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: The user-base of social media platforms, like Twitter, has grown dramatically around the world over the last decade. As people post everything they experience on social media, large volumes of valuable multimedia content are being recorded online, which can be analysed to help for a range of tasks. Here we specifically focus on crisis response. The majority of prior works in this space focus on using machine learning to categorize single-modality content (e.g. text of the posts, or images shared), with few works jointly utilizing multiple modalities. Hence, in this paper, we examine to what extent integrating multiple modalities is important for crisis content categorization. In particular, we design a pipeline for multi-modal learning that fuses textual and visual inputs, leverages both, and then classifies that content based on the specified task. Through evaluation using the CrisisMMD dataset, we demonstrate that effective automatic labelling for this task is possible, with an average of 88.31% F1 performance across two significant tasks (relevance and humanitarian category classification). while also analysing cases that unimodal models and multi-modal models success and fail.
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Hans Zimmermann. (2006). Availability of technologies versus capabilities of users. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 66–71). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: The regulatory environment is no longer the primary hindrance to the full application of telecommunications technology in the service of emergency response, disaster prevention and relief, and crisis management. Nowadays the restricting factor is the lack of knowledge about the capabilities, but also the limitations, of the multitude of specialized and of public communication systems. This paper will analyze the situation with the help of some practical examples and will recommend an interdisciplinary multi-stakeholder based approach to an educational concept for emergency and disaster telecommunications.
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