Abstract: Emergency management personnel often face feedback delays and a lack of reliable information. To address this problem, new information technologies have been developed that can provide real-time, image-based feedback. While potentially useful, this trend represents a fundamental shift in both the timing and format of the information used by incident commanders (ICs). Eight ICs took part in a simulation exercise to determine the potential impact of real-time imaging on their decision-making. Nearly all of the ICs failed to detect important changes in the situation that were not captured in the imaging but that were available via other, more traditional data sources. It appears that the ICs placed an inappropriately high level of trust in the imaging data, resulting in reduced data search activities and hypothesis generation. This research helps practitioners anticipate and guard against undesirable effects of introducing similar technologies on training and operational procedures.

Abstract: Disaster relief operations are very different from the traditional war operations. In disaster relief operations everything has to go very fast, the relief workers have to leave on very short notice and cooperation with other organizations is needed in order to save as many human lives as possible. The communication and information system of those operations has to be small, flexible, rapidly deployable and mobile. Above that, it has to ensure the information exchange between the coordination center in the home nation and the relief workers in the field in all kinds of situations with changing bandwidths and impermanent connections. In this document the structure and the data warehousing of such an information system are described.

Abstract: We report the findings of a crisis management survey on the role of IT in the crisis exercising, training and planning activities among companies in 6 different industries in two neighbouring European countries, Belgium and the Netherlands, having at least 50 employees. The survey was sent to 1450 Dutch and 1245 Belgian companies, 245 of which were returned, resulting in a response rate of 9%. The results of the survey show that the role of IT in these activities in both countries is very limited.

Abstract: The need to gather and use decentralized information and resources in responding to disasters demands an integrated interface that can support large-scale collaboration. This paper describes the development of a collaboration tool interface. The tool will surpass existing groupware and social networking applications, providing easy entry, categorization, and visualization of masses of critical data; the ability to form ad-hoc teams with collaboration protocols for negotiated action; and agent-augmented mixed-initiative tracking and coordination of these activities. The paper reports user testing results concerning the data entry interface, emergent leadership, and the directed negotiation process. The paper also discusses planned enhancements, including formalized collaboration engineering and the use of a disaster simulation test bed.

Abstract: This paper reports research in progress into a study of information flow and teamwork in Incident Management Teams (IMTs) in Australia. The research project, funded by the Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre. The overall research design includes interviews with experienced personnel, observations of real-time incidents and training simulations and a national questionnaire of incident management practices. Data reported in this conference session will focus on a sample of observation data conducted in two training simulations of a wildfire incident. Observations were video recorded and key IMT members wore lapel microphones. Video data has been coded for use of artifacts (e.g., maps, status boards) and room movement. Audio data has been coded for by the quantity and quality of interactions within and between IMT functions. The presentation aims to contribute to an understanding of what enables and constrains effective teamwork and information flow within Incident Control Centers (ICCs) in Australia.

Abstract: Dynamic Team Management for Cross-organization Collaboration was developed by IBM, in cooperation with the U. S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and MITRE (a federally funded research and development organization), to support participating organizations in the U.S. Homeland Security/Homeland Defense Command and Control Advance Concept Technology Demonstration (HLS/D C2 ACTD). Dynamic Team Management includes finding and accessing information about resources (people) with whom you need to communicate and collaborate on a mission or task. Used in conjunction with collaboration tools and other applications, DTM supports constructing cross-organization teams of individuals to address particular missions or tasks, based on emerging needs. DTM demonstrates approaches to overcoming many of the challenges of building the best teams for each mission/task, accommodating information sharing preferences of participating organizations, directory integration automation, dynamically scaling to meet cross-organization communication and collaboration requirements, and achieving organizational interoperability.

Abstract: Education in crisis response traditionally includes formal field exercises that attempt to replicate to some extent the chaos and complexity of an emergency situation. Part of the complexity facing multinational teams of crisis response professionals is diversity within the team itself. In this paper we discuss the group faultline model of diversity and its impact on team performance. Faultlines exist wherever there is diversity. When faultlines become active – And only when they become active – They form barriers to team cohesion and impediments to team performance. We propose that it is eminently feasible to develop a toolkit that managers of multinational crisis response teams can use to identify and span group faultlines. We identify two classes of tools. The first is a questionnaire that elicits information that can be used to (1) infer faultline length and to predict the relative likelihood of activation, and (2) identify (individual) team members who can span a ruptured faultline and facilitate team cohesion. The identification suggests appropriate actions that the instructor can take to help the team bridge the rift. The second tool in the kit is a checklist of defensive routines – policies and actions that attempt to save face – That can be used to identify faultline rupture. We are currently working at developing the tools in this toolkit.

Abstract: We report on the social media communications and work practices of the Jefferson County Type III Incident Management Team during the September 2013 Colorado Floods. In this case study, we examine flood-related communications across three platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and the team's blog for insight into how this innovative team coordinated their communications to meet the information needs of a community outside of the media spotlight. Using a mixed method approach of interviews and social media content analysis, we describe their online behaviors in relation to the needs of the emergency response as a whole. We report on adaptations to their work practice that allowed them to extend traditional communications with social media to create an integrated communication plan. Finally, we look to the team's experiences for direction in how to use social media in emergencies generally.

Abstract: The purpose of this field study was investigate teamwork and communication among event management personnel, to assess the degree to which PROBE, the advanced prototype they were using to manage a CBRNE simulation, would adequately meet their needs. The study was a continuation of previous research conducted in the early phase of PROBE development. Two communication-related analyses were applied to identify instances of effective and of ineffective communication among the management team. These revealed that communication was mostly effective. However, the one serious communication breakdown that was observed could have had fatal consequences. It showed that great care must be taken to ensure the safety of first responders at all times when evaluating prototypes in the field. A list of questions was generated from the lessons learned to assist future researchers prepare for CBRNE field studies.

Abstract: Concepts such as trust, shared understanding, cultural differences, mental workload, and organizational structure all impact upon the effectiveness of an organization (e.g., Tindale & Kameda, 2000), and even more so in the context of large scale multinational operations (e.g, Smith, Granlund, & Lindgen, 2010). In order to study these concepts we plan a multinational, distributed experiment with participants from three nations collaborating in the same virtual environment: Canadian, British, and Swedish participants will work together as part of a multinational MTS to deal with a complex task and gain control of a crisis situation. Empirical research on MTS remains limited (see, e.g., DeChurch & Marks, 2006) particularly at the multinational level where the investigation of MTS has been so far focused on case studies and exercises (e.g., Goodwin, Essens, & Smith, 2012). Therefore, there is a need to empirically study multinational MTS in order to assess the specific issues that multinational operations face, notably cultural and languages differences. The simulation environment used as experimental platform for this project is C3Fire (www.c3fire.org, Granlund & Granlund, 2011). C3Fire creates an environment whereby teams must work together to resolve a crisis in the firefighting domain, with the goal of evacuating people in critical areas, putting out the forest fire, and protecting buildings and other areas of value from the burning forest fire. This platform makes it possible to study participants' collaborative processes when dealing with a set of crisis scenarios in the context of a simulated emergency response situation. To deal efficiently with the crisis management operation, participants need to prioritize between different objectives, identify and protect critical areas, and plan and implement activities based on given resources. All these tasks are distributed between team members, compelling participants to exchange information and coordinate within and between teams to execute the task. The task is divided into three areas of responsibility as follows: 1) Information and Planning, responsible for situation assessment and providing the operating picture; 2) Operation and Logistic, responsible for intervention and resource management; and 3) Search and Rescue, responsible for research and management of civilians. C3Fire is designed to: 1) achieve an optimal compromise between internal and external validity; 2) show flexibility in scenario configuration (spectrum of units and roles – including search and rescue functions; Tremblay et al., 2010), allowing researchers to capture emergency response and crisis management and rapid response planning; 3) be highly configurable for testing many different types of teams (e.g., hierarchical vs. horizontal organizations); and 4) readily provide objective, non-intrusive metrics for assessing teamwork effectiveness (including macrocognitive functions and team processes) as well as quantitative measures of task performance (that take into account conflicting mission goals). © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: In order to reduce the effects of a disaster, people in the emergency management organization have to be trained. In recent years training emergency management teams has become a bigger issue. A realistic and effective training of emergency management teams however is a difficult matter. We search for ways to improve this kind of training and to reduce the costs. In this paper two tools that can be used to improve emergency management training, CrisisKit and MOPED, will be discussed. © Proceedings ISCRAM 2004.

Abstract: Today's society is exposed to an increasing number of disasters and large scale emergencies (e.g. earthquake in Haiti, global swine flu, or manmade disasters like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico). Information and communication technology (ICT) can help to prevent and mitigate the effects of threatening situations if applied appropriately. In industry ICT governance methods and portfolio management techniques have become important tools to successfully align ICT with business goals. However, the domain of emergency management (EM) has to deal with unpredictable situations, multi organizational collaborations and ad-hoc teams, conditions which make conventional existing methods less useful. Based on a qualitative analysis of several European and Australian EM organizations and government agencies this paper discusses a modular approach to optimize ICT portfolios in Emergency Management organizations in order to achieve strategic ICT alignment.