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Charles Bailly, & Carole Adam. (2017). An interactive simulation for testing communication strategies in bushfires. 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. 72–84). Albi, France: Iscram.
Abstract: Australia is frequently hit by bushfires. In 2009, the “Black Saturday” fires killed 173 people and burnt hectares of bush. As a result, a research commission was created to investigate, and concluded that several aspects could be improved, in particular better understanding of the population actual behaviour, and better communication with them. We argue that agent-based modelling and simulation is a great tool to test possible communication strategies, in order to deduce valuable insight for emergency managers before new fires happen. In this paper, we extend an existing agent-based model of the population behaviour in bushfires. Concretely, we added a communication model based in social sciences, and user interactivity with the model. We present the results of first experiments with dierent communication strategies, providing valuable insight for better communication with the population during such events. This model is still preliminary and will eventually be turned into a serious game.
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Anthony Charles, Matthieu Lauras, & Rolando Tomasini. (2009). Learning from previous humanitarian operations, a business process reengineering approach. 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: Uncertainty and risks are part of humanitarians' daily routine. Most of the time, infrastructures are damaged or non-existent, the political climate is highly volatile, communication means are insufficient, and so on. Therefore, humanitarian organizations often have to find original methods to implement their supply chains. They may also face recurrent problems, that requires them to change the way they operate. And yet, as they lack the time and resources to reflect on the lessons learnt, most of their best practices and issues are neither captured nor communicated. The aim of the study is thus to propose a framework to capitalize humanitarians' knowledge and know-how, to analyze both gaps and best practices and learn from one operation to another. To this end, we propose a framework derived from traditional Enterprise Modelling tools, adapted to fit relief chains' specificities. Field applications are then given to illustrate our approach and its beneficial effects.
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Javier Mulero Chaves, & Cristina Parraga Niebla. (2013). Design of an enhanced interface for composition of alert messages: Methodology and results. 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. 507–511). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: Alerting the population during crisis using available communication systems can significantly reduce the impact of emergency situations. However, the understanding of the alert and trust by recipients is influenced by the alert message content and style. It is therefore desirable that alert messages are formulated with sufficient information and in a style that eases understanding of the message and fosters trust, so that the recommended protective actions are actually undertaken. Within the EU Alert4All project, an alert message dispatcher is being currently implemented, which disseminates alert messages through multiple communication systems in a harmonized manner, fostering best practices in the formulation of alert messages in a user-friendly manner. The design of the dispatcher features and graphical user interface was supported by a field practitioner workshop with participants from different European countries. This paper describes the workshop methodology, its results and the impact on the message dispatcher design.
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Rui Chen, Raghav H. Rao, Raj Sharman, Shambhu J Upadhyaya, & Catherine Cook-Cottone. (2010). Examination of emergency response from knowledge and psychology perspectives. 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: This research-in-progress examines the roles of technology and human systems in supporting emergency response management through the dual perspectives of knowledge and psychology. Task critical knowledge is linked to organizational effectiveness in delivering business value and psychological factors characterize the unique challenges of an emergency context. This exploratory research is among the first to develop a theoretical model based on these two important yet understudied theoretical aspects. The article contributes to the research development in emergency response information systems and sheds light on the organizational response management practice.
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Rui Chen, Thirumurugan Thiyagarajan, Raghav H. Rao, & JinKyu LeeK. (2010). Design of a FOSS system for flood disaster management. 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: In this paper we study how information technology solutions can be used when disasters strike. This research in progress focuses on flood disasters and it proposes the design for flood disaster management. To increase the utility of the disaster management information system, we follow the free and open source system (FOSS) concept. Informed by the management tasks of flood response, we elaborate the system requirements and key functionalities. The system has received preliminary evaluation by the domain experts and is currently under further development.
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Elia Chepaitis. (2004). The impact of Y2K on crisis management: Widening the stakeholder circle for crisis prevention and response. In B. C. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2004 – 1st International Workshop on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 111–113). Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Although Y2K was neither an accident nor an unanticipated challenge, the millennium debugging represented a watershed event for crisis response and management, and the range of effects remains relevant in 2004. Not only information systems professionals, but also leaders and professionals in every application area saw computer systems as subsystems of their areas of responsibility and accountability. The acknowledged dependence of government, healthcare, utilities, transportation, services, and communications on reliable information systems widened the circle of stakeholders for crisis prevention, response, and management. Emergency preparedness and broad systems approaches to disaster and contingency planning were enhanced by the ubiquitous multi-year Y2K effort. The author emphasizes the investments, learning, leadership, and commitment in information systems control that occurred as part of the prevention stage of crisis management as a result of Y2K. The simultaneity, high stakes, and ubiquity of the millennium crisis permanently altered the circle of players with vested interests in and responsibility for information systems control. From government agencies to households, users realized that the scope of information systems design and reliability must extend beyond computer engineers and information systems professionals to ensure the general good. © Proceedings ISCRAM 2004.
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Soudip Roy Chowdhury, Muhammad Imran, Muhammad Rizwan Asghar, Amer-Yahia, S., & Carlos Castillo. (2013). Tweet4act: Using incident-specific profiles for classifying crisis-related messages. 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. 834–839). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: We present Tweet4act, a system to detect and classify crisis-related messages communicated over a microblogging platform. Our system relies on extracting content features from each message. These features and the use of an incident-specific dictionary allow us to determine the period type of an incident that each message belongs to. The period types are: Pre-incident (messages talking about prevention, mitigation, and preparedness), during-incident (messages sent while the incident is taking place), and post-incident (messages related to the response, recovery, and reconstruction). We show that our detection method can effectively identify incident-related messages with high precision and recall, and that our incident-period classification method outperforms standard machine learning classification methods.
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Chris Hagar. (2015). Public Library Partnerships with Local Agencies to Meet Community Disaster Preparedness and Response Needs. 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: This paper reports on the initial findings of the first phase of a study funded by San Jose State University, USA to provideinsightregardinghowpubliclibrariescanbe moreinvolvedincommunity-wide disasterplanning,strengtheningtheirroleascoremembersof theircommunities?disasterpreparedness and responseinfrastructure. The first phase of the study involves a nationwide survey of public library directors and library staff who are involved in coordinating disaster planning for their institutions. A survey was carried out during December 2014 and January 2015 to explorewhatpubliclibrariescanbringtocommunity-wideplanningefforts and thetypesofpartnershipsthatarepossible. The findingswillprovidelibraryleaderswithvaluableinsighton how to proactivelyengageindialogueandplanningwiththeirlocalemergencymanagement community. The second phase emerging from the research will involve follow-up in-depth explorations of the exemplary disaster planning models.
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Christelle Pierkot, Sidonie Christophe, & Jean François Girres. (2019). Exploring multiplexing tools for co-visualization in crisis units. 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: Natural hazards can generate damages in large inhabited areas in a very short time period. Crisis managers must
plan interventions very quickly to facilitate the arrival of the first emergency. In a crisis unit, experts visualize
heterogeneous visual representations of spatio-temporal information, in order to facilitate decision-making,
based on various types of screens, i.e. laptops, tablets, or wall screens. Visualizing all this information at the
same time on the same interface would lead to cognitive overload. In this paper, we assume that it could be of
interest to provide innovative co-visualization models and tools, to bring hazard, geospatial and climate
information together, in a shared interface. We propose to explore spatial and temporal multiplexing tools within
a dedicated geovisualization environment, in order to help expert decision-making. The proposition is
implemented with the case study of a tsunami event in the Caribbean sea.
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Christian Flachberger, & Eduard Gringinger. (2016). Decision Support for Networked Crisis & Disaster Management ? A Comparison with the Air Traffic Management Domain. 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: 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.
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Christian Iasio, Ingrid Canovas, Elie Chevillot-Miot, & Tendry Randramialala. (2022). A New Approach to Structured Processing of Feedback for Discovering and Investigating Interconnections, Cascading Events and Disaster Chains. In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 285–298). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: Post-disaster information processing is relevant for the continuous improvement of operations and the reductionof risks. The current methodologies for post-disaster review suffer from several limitations, which reduce their use as a way of translating narrative in data for qualitative and quantitative analysis. Learning or effective knowledge sharing need a common formalism and method. Ontologies are the reference tool for structuring information in a “coded” data structure. Using the investigation of disaster management during the 2017 hurricane season in the French West Indies within the scope of the ANR “APRIL” project, this contribution introduces a methodology and a tool for providing a graphical representation of experiences for post-disaster review and lessons learning, based on a novel approach to case-based ontology development.
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Christian Siemen, Roberto dos Santos Rocha, Roelof P. van den Berg, Bernd Hellingrath, & João Porto de Albuquerque. (2017). Collaboration among Humanitarian Relief Organizations and Volunteer Technical Communities: Identifying Research Opportunities and Challenges through a Systematic Literature Review. 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. 1043–1054). Albi, France: Iscram.
Abstract: Collaboration is the foundation to strengthen disaster preparedness and for effective emergency response actions at all levels. Some studies have highlighted that remote volunteers, i.e., volunteers supported by Web 2.0 technologies, possess the potential to strengthen humanitarian relief organizations by offering information regarding disaster-affected people and infrastructure. Although studies have explored various aspects of this topic, none of those provided an overview of the state-of-the-art of researches on the collaboration among humanitarian organizations and communities of remote volunteers. With the aim of overcoming this gap, a systematic literature review was conducted on the existing research works. Therefore, the main contribution of this work lies in examining the state of research in this field and in identifying potential research gaps. The results show that most of the research works addresses the general domain of disaster management, whereas only few of them address the domain of humanitarian logistics.
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Christina Tsouti, Eleni Ntzioni, Efstathia Tsarouchi, Dimitris Sakellariou, Marios Kotoulas, Christina Papadaskalopoulou, et al. (2022). Preparedness against Hazardous Events: A Novel Tool for Water Utilities. In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 185–199). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: Various terms and approaches currently exist on outlining the constituent components of crisis management as well as their interrelations, focusing mainly on the effective communication between the members of the crisis management unit. A gap emerges regarding a high-level and holistic approach on crisis management that will have the organization’s preparedness as its main pillar. In this work, crisis is organized into three macro-stages, i.e., pre-crisis, crisis, post-crisis. Preparedness is conceptualized as an overarching concept that frames an organization’s crisis management approach to reduce its vulnerability in a potential crisis. The study focuses on developing a high-level tool to enhance the preparedness of water utilities. The tool aims to serve as a holistic crisis management framework to support stakeholders in qualitatively assessing and improving their level of preparedness. The “Preparedness against hazardous events” tool was the result of this work, which was positively assessed through experts’ evaluation.
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Christine Adler, Werner Sauter, Jona Meyer, Maria Hagl, & Margit Raich. (2015). First Steps in the Development of an Internet-based Learning Platform for Strategic Crisis Managers. 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: Based on interviews with European crisis managers and other stakeholders, we identified specific learning requirements regarding psycho-social support in disaster management. This paper describes the process of developing a learning environment specifically for disaster managers with strategic responsibilities. Focusing on competence development, the underlying concept emphasizes peer-like exchanges and self-directed learning rather than passive, externally organized training methods. For that purpose a web-based learning platform is being developed in combination with competence development modules tailored to the needs of crisis managers. The envisioned learning platform utilizes blended learning and social learning concepts and technologies to facilitate knowledge building, adapted and customized to the needs of the crisis managers. End-user requirements will be individually assessed in order to generate up-to-date content while considering the wider EU-context.
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Christoph Amelunxen, & Janina Isabella Sander. (2019). Information collection using process visualisation in the risk management concept for emergency response. 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: Security-critical processes of emergency response are part of a complex system of people, organisation and
technology. They are often characterised by their own dynamics, interconnectedness and information deficits. In
addition, a wide variety of stakeholders, some from different organisations, work together, each specialising in a
specific area. In order to capture this (process-) knowledge in risk management, information from the experts is
necessary. However, experts are difficult to access, often separated locally, cost-intensive and usually have little
time (discussion-) capacity. A pictogram-based process visualisation was developed within the risk management
concept. The method could be validated within a European project in an expert workshop. This was done using
the example of a CBRN mass casualty incident. By using the methods presented, very good qualitative and
quantitative results can be achieved from the perspectives of various organisations and their experts. The limited
resource ?expert? is used optimally.
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Christophe Viavattene, Simon McCarthy, Michelle Ferri, Martina Monego, & Maurizio Mazzoleni. (2016). Evaluation of emergency protocols using agent-based approach. 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: Integrated flood risk management involves a large portfolio of options for mitigating risks that includes hard and soft structural, non-structural, and recovery responses. Non-structural responses include flood warnings, emergency services supported by individuals, collective actions and the use of resistance and resilience measures. Sufficient flood warning time, appropriate actions at desired locations and time are essential for effective and beneficial responses. From this perspective beside the management of the crisis itself, the level of preparedness including the evaluation of plans involving such responses (e.g. emergency protocols) also needs to be sufficient and, thus in the context of various event scenarios.
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Michael J. Chumer, & Murray Turoff. (2006). Command and control (C2): Adapting the distributed military model for emergency response and emergency management. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 465–476). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: The military use of Command and Control (C2) has been refined over centuries of use and developed through years of combat situations. This C2 model is framed as process, function, and organization, suggesting that emergency response organizations and emergency management structure their non military C2 and subsequent response scenarios within the C2 framework established in this paper.
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Marline Claessens, Nicolas Lewyckyj, Jane Biesemans, & Jurgen Everaerts. (2005). Pegasus, a UAV project for disaster 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. 233–236). Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: The Flemish Institute for Technological Research (Vito) in Belgium has initiated in 2000 the PEGASUS (Policy support for European Governments by Acquisition of information from Satellite and UAV-borne Sensors) project which envisages the development of a solar powered UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) containing several types of instruments for remote sensing and flying at an altitude of about 20 km. The aircraft can be deployed rapidly in crisis situations and provide disaster managers with ~1 m resolution images (or better if required) of the affected area. High quality data shall be received in less than half an hour from a mobile ground station that is in direct contact with the UAV, which can operate as long as requested by the user. The PEGASUS HALE-UAV is a flexible and cost-effective tool that will allow officials and local authorities to dispose quickly over relevant geographical information in an emergency situation. The first demonstration flight of the PEGASUS HALE-UAV shall take place in the summer of 2005 over Flanders.
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Claire Laudy. (2017). Rumors detection on Social Media during Crisis Management. 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. 623–632). Albi, France: Iscram.
Abstract: Social Media monitoring has become a major issue in crisis and emergencies management. Indeed, social media may ease the sharing of information between citizens and Public Safety Organizations, but it also enables the rapid spreading of inaccurate information. As information is now provided and shared by anyone to anyone, information credibility is a major issue. We propose an approach to detect rumor in social media. This paper describes our work on semantic graph based information fusion, enhanced with uncertainty management capabilities. The uncertainty management capability enables managing the dierent level of credibility of actors of an emergency (dierent PSO oÿcers and citizens). Functions for information synthesis, conflicting information detection and information evaluation were developed and test during experimentation campaigns. The synthesis and conflicting information detection functionalities are very welcome by end-users. However, the uncertainty management is a combinatorial approach which remains a limitation for use with large amount of information.
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Clara Le Duff, Jean-Philippe Gitto, Julien Jeany, Raphaël Falco, Matthieu Lauras, & Frederick Benaben. (2022). A Physics-based Approach to Evaluate Crisis Impacts on Project Management. In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 134–143). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: Project management has become a standard in business. Unfortunately, the projects as well as companies are increasingly subject to major disruptions. In this context, it is of prime importance to have the ability to manage the risks inherent to these projects to best achieve their objectives. The existing approaches of crisis management in the literature no longer seem to be adapted to this new normality. The future of research lies in a more systematic crisis assessment and a better conceptualization of the uncertainty associated with risks. It is necessary to rely on the collection of heterogeneous data in order to maximize the understanding of the project environment and to find a way that best describes and visualizes the influence of crises on the project management processes. This article uses the POD approach and applies it in the context of project management to address these issues.
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Cody Buntain, Richard Mccreadie, & Ian Soboroff. (2021). Incident Streams 2020: TRECIS in the Time of COVID-19. 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. 621–639). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Between 2018 and 2019, the Incident Streams track (TREC-IS) has developed standard approaches for classifying the types and criticality of information shared in online social spaces during crises, but the introduction of SARS-CoV-2 has shifted the landscape of online crises substantially. While prior editions of TREC-IS have lacked data on large-scale public-health emergencies as these events are exceedingly rare, COVID-19 has introduced an over-abundance of potential data, and significant open questions remain about how existing approaches to crisis informatics and datasets built on other emergencies adapt to this new context. This paper describes how the 2020 edition of TREC-IS has addressed these dual issues by introducing a new COVID-19-specific task for evaluating generalization of existing COVID-19 annotation and system performance to this new context, applied to 11 regions across the globe. TREC-IS has also continued expanding its set of target crises, adding 29 new events and expanding the collection of event types to include explosions, fires, and general storms, making for a total of 9 event types in addition to the new COVID-19 events. Across these events, TREC-IS has made available 478,110 COVID-related messages and 282,444 crisis-related messages for participant systems to analyze, of which 14,835 COVID-related and 19,784 crisis-related messages have been manually annotated. Analyses of these new datasets and participant systems demonstrate first that both the distributions of information type and priority of information vary between general crises and COVID-19-related discussion. Secondly, despite these differences, results suggest leveraging general crisis data in the COVID-19 context improves performance over baselines. Using these results, we provide guidance on which information types appear most consistent between general crises and COVID-19.
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Cody Buntain, Richard Mccreadie, & Ian Soboroff. (2022). Incident Streams 2021 Off the Deep End: Deeper Annotations and Evaluations in Twitter. In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 584–604). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: This paper summarizes the final year of the four-year Text REtrieval Conference Incident Streams track (TREC-IS), which has produced a large dataset comprising 136,263 annotated tweets, spanning 98 crisis events. Goals of this final year were twofold: 1) to add new categories for assessing messages, with a focus on characterizing the audience, author, and images associated with these messages, and 2) to enlarge the TREC-IS dataset with new events, with an emphasis of deeper pools for sampling. Beyond these two goals, TREC-IS has nearly doubled the number of annotated messages per event for the 26 crises introduced in 2021 and has released a new parallel dataset of 312,546 images associated with crisis content – with 7,297 tweets having annotations about their embedded images. Our analyses of this new crisis data yields new insights about the context of a tweet; e.g., messages intended for a local audience and those that contain images of weather forecasts and infographics have higher than average assessments of priority but are relatively rare. Tweets containing images, however, have higher perceived priorities than tweets without images. Moving to deeper pools, while tending to lower classification performance, also does not generally impact performance rankings or alter distributions of information-types. We end this paper with a discussion of these datasets, analyses, their implications, and how they contribute both new data and insights to the broader crisis informatics community.
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Linn Marks Collins, James E. Powell Jr., Carolyn E Dunford, Ketan K. Mane, & Mark L.B. Martinez. (2008). Emergency information Synthesis and awareness using E-SOS. In B. V. de W. F. Fiedrich (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2008 – 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 618–623). Washington, DC: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: In an emergency, people need to be able to report and find relevant information quickly. Fulfilling these information needs is the design goal of E-SOS: Emergency Situation Overview and Synthesis, a research project in progress. E-SOS will consist of (1) a website where users can report information, (2) web services that find and synthesize related information from multiple sources, and (3) interface tools that visualize and display links to this information. In this paper we describe three of these services and tools: the topic, geographic, and information space awareness tools. When a user writes a report, the topic awareness tool will execute a federated search and display links to related information. The information space awareness tool will highlight these links in a visualization of the information space. If the user refers to a location, the geographic awareness tool will focus a map on this location and display topic-related icons.
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Tina Comes, Claudine Conrado, Michael Hiete, Michiel Kamermans, Gregor Pavlin, & Niek Wijngaards. (2010). An intelligent decision support system for decision making under uncertainty in distributed reasoning frameworks. 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: This paper presents an intelligent system facilitating better-informed decision making under severe uncertainty as found in emergency management. The construction of decision-relevant scenarios, being coherent and plausible descriptions of a situation and its future development, is used as a rationale for collecting, organizing, filtering and processing information for decision making. The development of scenarios is geared to assessing decision alternatives, thus avoiding time-consuming analysis and processing of irrelevant information. The scenarios are constructed in a distributed setting allowing for a flexible adaptation of reasoning (principles and processes) to the problem at hand and the information available. This approach ensures that each decision can be founded on a coherent set of scenarios, which was constructed using the best expertise available within a limited timeframe. Our theoretical framework is demonstrated in a distributed decision support system by orchestrating both automated systems and human experts into workflows tailored to each specific problem.
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Tina Comes, Michael Hiete, Niek Wijngaards, & Masja Kempen. (2009). Integrating scenario-based reasoning into multi-criteria decision analysis. 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: Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is a technique for decision support which aims at providing transparent and coherent support for complex decision situations taking into account subjective preferences of the decision makers. However, MCDA does not foresee an analysis of multiple plausible future developments of a given situation. In contrast, scenario-based reasoning (SBR) is frequently used to assess future developments on the longer term. The ability to discuss multiple plausible future developments provides a rationale for strategic plans and actions. Nevertheless, SBR lacks an in-depth performance evaluation of the considered actions. This paper explores the integration of both techniques that combines their respective strengths as well as their application in environmental crisis management. The proposed methodology is illustrated by an environmental incident example. Future work is to conduct validations on the basis of real-world scenarios by public Dutch and Danish chemical incident crisis management authorities.
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