Lise Ann St. Denis, & Amanda Hughes. (2018). Crisis Cleanup: Creating a Virtual Command Post to Support Relief Organizations on the Ground. In Kees Boersma, & Brian Tomaszeski (Eds.), ISCRAM 2018 Conference Proceedings – 15th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 935–941). Rochester, NY (USA): Rochester Institute of Technology.
Abstract: We report on an initial assessment of a grassroots tool developed within the Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) community to support the coordination of efforts between the diverse network of relief organizations on the ground following a disaster. We look first at the problems that led to its development and the volunteer principles embodied in the tool. We then present an overview of the primary workflows and processes used to capture and manage work orders within this system. We discuss some of the benefits of centralized coordination of work across this network, opportunities for future growth, and some of the barriers that are inhibiting further growth of this tool. Finally, we conclude with opportunities for future research.
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Gerhard Rauchecker, & Guido Schryen. (2018). Decision Support for the Optimal Coordination of Spontaneous Volunteers in Disaster Relief. In Kees Boersma, & Brian Tomaszeski (Eds.), ISCRAM 2018 Conference Proceedings – 15th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 69–82). Rochester, NY (USA): Rochester Institute of Technology.
Abstract: When responding to natural disasters, professional relief units are often supported by many volunteers which are not affiliated to humanitarian organizations. The effective coordination of these volunteers is crucial to leverage their capabilities and to avoid conflicts with professional relief units. In this paper, we empirically identify key requirements that professional relief units pose on this coordination. Based on these requirements, we suggest a decision model. We computationally solve a real-world instance of the model and empirically validate the computed solution in interviews with practitioners. Our results show that the suggested model allows for solving volunteer coordination tasks of realistic size near-optimally within short time, with the determined solution being well accepted by practitioners. We also describe in this article how the suggested decision support model is integrated in the volunteer coordination system, which we develop in joint cooperation with a disaster management authority and a software development company.
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Sebastian Lindner, Stefan Sackmann, & Hans Betke. (2019). Simulating Spontaneous Volunteers: A System Entity Structure for Defining Disaster Scenarios. 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: Fast and easy communication, e.g. via Twitter or Facebook, encourages self-coordination between spontaneous
volunteers in disasters. Unfortunately, this is more and more challenging official disaster management. The need
for the directed coordination of spontaneous volunteers triggered researchers to develop effective coordination
approaches. However, evaluating and comparing such approaches as well as their exercising are lacking a
standardized way to describe repeatable disaster scenarios, e.g. for simulations. Therefore, we present a novel
System Entity Structure (SES) for describing disaster scenarios considering the disaster environment,
communication infrastructure, disaster management, and population of spontaneous volunteers. The SES is
discussed as a promising scheme for including spontaneous volunteers in disaster scenarios on a general level. Its
applicability is demonstrated by a Pruned Entity Structure derived from a real disaster scenario. Based on the
results, we give an outlook on our subsequent research, the XML-based Spontaneous Volunteer Coordination
Scenario Definition Language (SVCSDL).
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