Abstract: Disaster management and risk prevention in Algeria have undergone many changes in the recent years. Important efforts have been provided on the legal and organizational sides to set the right conditions for an integrated and collaborative framework for disaster management in the country. The aim is to address the lack of information sharing, coordination and collaboration among the involved organizations. However, although the enhancement of the organizational arrangements, several problems persist mainly related to the implementation of these measures. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose an IT based platform in the field of risks prevention and disaster management (DM). This platform provides decision support, enables information sharing, helps to enhance public awareness regarding risks and disasters, supports communication and dissemination of information and alerts in disaster situations and facilitates the implementation of regulation related to disaster management.

Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of situation reports used and created by a crisis management team within the Swedish healthcare sector during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis was conducted through a deductive content analysis, where categories were identified based on the concepts of common operational pictures, sensemaking, and situation awareness. In the analysis, support for all identified categories was found. Based on the analysis and the concepts, future recommendations regarding what type of information that ought to be included in situation reports were created. These recommendations include, amongst others, the categories of consequences, how it is perceived by the public, objectives, status and implications of information, future scenarios, actions, resources, and work procedures.

Abstract: Much of the crisis management literature focuses on improving communication by improving the integrity of communication equipment, vulnerable for example, to the loss of electricity. But communication issues arise in sociotechnical systems with functioning communication equipment, prompting researchers and practitioners alike to bemoan the absence of information sharing. Computer scientists envision a giant virtual display accessible to all, but little thought has gone into the principles for selecting, formatting and organizing content to make it useful. Here we argue that what is needed is information rather than data, and that situating data in context is key to the provision of information. Documentation of information exchange issues in real crisis management is quite superficial, generally pointing to conclusions without any supporting data. Using documentation of the Deepwater Horizon Accident in 2010, we distinguish between data and information, and the challenge this poses to the design of computational support for information sharing.

Abstract: In crisis management, units from different organizations collaborate for achieving a common goal. The success of such collaborations depends partly and not insignificantly on the composition of the network of collaborating units. In the initial phases of a crisis management operation, there is often a great deal of uncertainty about the nature and the extent of the crisis. The uncertainty may lead to contradictory and otherwise imperfect information sharing among the organizations and agencies that are responsible for engaging the crisis. This in turn, may lead to suboptimal and inefficient compositions of the collaborating network. This paper suggests the use of contracts for information sharing for ensuring that the information sharing indeed facilitates efficient formation of collaborating networks.

Abstract: This paper is about European networked crisis and disaster management and how to achieve more intelligent decision support and better collaboration. Although collaboration processes are established, the underlying information management tools today don?t support integrated electronic information management in multi-organizational scenarios. This leads to a fragmentation of relevant information into pieces held by different stakeholders. Recently, the concept of the Common Information Space has been introduced as possible solution. This paper looks to the domain of Air Traffic Management where a similar problem was tackled by a concept called System Wide Information Management. The paper starts with describing the operational context, the unresolved needs, and the derived requirements. Experiences from the Air Traffic Management domain are gathered and compared with current solution concepts from the public safety domain. The paper concludes with lessons learned during the on-going development in the public safety domain.

Abstract: In peace support operations, military and civil actors are often cooperating in international coalitions. In such operations, effective and efficient coordination and information sharing is a prerequisite for effective Civil-Military Interaction (CMI), but the literature shows that this still leaves much room for improvement. Most research in this area takes a behavioral-science approach. We argue that existing research could be complemented with a design-science approach, which is an Information Systems problem-solving paradigm with its roots in engineering. After developing a high level CMI information exchange model and identifying inhibitors for information exchange, this paper provides a comparison between CMI in peace support operations and the collaboration of commercial enterprises using the e-Business paradigm. Based on observed similarities, the paper argues that the enabling technology for e-Business could overcome current inhibitors for effective and efficient information exchange for CMI in peace support operations, and is complementary to other mechanisms for information exchange. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: The current humanitarian system is based on institutions created during the Industrial Age. It was built when connectivity was a very scarce resource and information sharing was something that only happened during meetings. The increased resiliency of mobile communication networks and the proliferation of satellite based network connectivity have lead to information being much easier to share. At the same time the rise of social networks and the explosive growth of mobile ownership amongst the affected communities has lead to a new way of communicating. Furthermore the large institutional humanitarian response organizations are no longer the only responders, with multiple smaller organizations responding. This paper looks at the opportunities new technologies have provided in rethinking the humanitarian response system and how new approaches may address some of the key issues faced in large-scale disasters in recent years. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: In a large earthquake, rescue operations and fire-fighting are obstructed by fire-spreading and street-blockages. Therefore, it is important to quickly collect and utilize disaster information for disaster mitigation. In this paper, firstly, we develop a Web application for posting and viewing information collected by users in real time. Using this system, it is possible not only to easily share disaster information among users but also to apply to damage forecast such as fire-spreading. Next, we demonstrate the usefulness of the Web application by the following evaluation view points: (1) relationship between the access time of emergency vehicles from fire stations to the locations of fires and the ratio of collected information on street-blockage which is assumed to be collected with this system; (2) reciprocating time between a server and a client which is dependent on the number of users and band limitation after the occurrence of a disaster.

Abstract: We consider the problem of providing situational awareness when citizens in a disaster are willing to contribute their own devices, such as laptops and smart phones, to gather data (text, images, audio or video) and to help forward data gathered by others. A situational awareness service processes all received data and creates annotated maps to visualize a disaster site (e.g., the status of the disaster, such as fires or floods, the location of people, food, or water). We discuss the challenges imposed on such an application when 1) the communications infrastructure in the disaster area can only provide intermittent connectivity, 2) anxious victims generate large amounts of redundant content congesting the network, and 3) the sharing of personal devices creates security and privacy threats. We present an architecture that addresses the requirements to support such a service.

Abstract: Distributed teams increasingly rely on collaboration environments, typically including chat, to link diverse experts for real time information sharing and decision-making. Current chat-based technologies enable easy exchange of information, but don't focus on managing those information exchanges. Important cues that guide face-to-face collaboration are either lost or missing. In some military environments, operators may juggle over a dozen chat rooms in order to collaborate on complex missions. This often leads to confusion, overload, miscommunication and delayed decisions. Our technology supports chat management. A summary display bar reduces the number of chat rooms operators need open by providing high level situational awareness pointers, in real-time, to: a) rooms with increasing message activity levels, b) rooms in which important collaborators are participating (those in the operator's social network), and c) rooms in which operator-selected keywords are used. This ability to peripherally monitor less critical chat rooms reduces operator overload, while enhancing the ability to rapidly detect important emerging discussion threads. © 2008 The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.

Abstract: This short paper briefly introduces the beamCitizen, a next-generation public safety mobile communications technology. It provides a mobile cloud communication platform that allows sharing of live video, voice, text, photo, location and other critical information among citizens, dispatchers and responders. It aims to connect people, information, and sensors. Our approach was to apply and implement ?Internet of Things? for development of the beamCitizen. To evaluate the beamCitizen, we used the University of Maryland as a pilot to create an end to end public safety communication and response service among the citizens, the 911 center and the first responders in order to help connect and protect close to 20000 students, faculty and visitors. It is available for download.

Abstract: Situation awareness is created through the dynamic process of perception and action and serves as a foundation of overall performance throughout many different domains, such as education, military operations, air traffic control, driving, search and rescue, and crisis management [Endsley, 2006]. Information sharing is an important factor to be consider in situation awareness. In this paper, we present how tools can support information sharing in crisis management. So, we study how crisis management team dealt with two exercises using firstly whiteboards and secondly, CRIMSON a digital decision support tool.