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Christine Adler, Marion Krüsmann, Thomas Greiner-Mai, Anton Donner, Javier Mulero Chaves, & Àngels Via Estrem. (2011). IT-supported management of mass casualty incidents: The e-triage project. 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: Voice, analogue mobile radio, and paper have een successfully used for decades for coordination of emergencies and disasters, but although being simple and robust this approach cannot keep pace with todays requirements any more. Emerging and established digital communication standards open the door to new applications and services, but the expected benefit needs to be carefully evaluated against robustness, interoperability, and user-friendliness. This paper describes a framework for IT-supported management of mass casualty incidents, which is currently under implementation and study. The four pillars of the concept are handheld devices for use both in daily rescue operations and in disasters, autonomous satellite-based communication infrastructure, a distributed database concept for maximal availability, and psychological acceptance research.
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Catherine Lowry Campbell, Fadi Deek, Murray Turoff, & Bartel A. Van De Walle. (2004). Measuring consensus and conflict among stakeholders in emergency response information system requirements negotiations. In B. C. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2004 – 1st International Workshop on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 121–126). Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: This paper introduces the experimental design we developed for the analysis of asynchronous negotiations among five different stakeholders as they work towards consensus on the functional system requirements that are needed for a common emergency response information system. We present three analytical preference models to measure the evolving consensus and conflict among the stakeholders as they modify their preferences during the negotiation. We illustrate the use of these techniques for obtaining a detailed understanding of the negotiation dynamics among the stakeholders. © Proceedings ISCRAM 2004.
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Catherine Lowry Campbell, Bartel A. Van De Walle, & Fadi P. Deek. (2005). Asynchronous negotiation and collaboration of software requirements for an emergency response information system: An empirical investigation. In B. C. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2005 – 2nd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 5–11). Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Negotiation and collaboration during the requirements stage of the software engineering process are fundamental to developing successful software products. Groups of stakeholders work together to come to agreement on the most important requirements to be sent forward for implementation. Distributed software engineering is becoming the norm rather than the exception, yet the requirements elicitation and definition process is normally conducted face to face. This paper describes an empirical study to investigate the relationship between structured task and specified negotiation steps within an asynchronous environment. The results reveal that these structures can have a positive impact on solution quality but a negative impact on process satisfaction, although following a negotiation sequence and task structure can help asynchronous groups come to agreement faster. Details of the experimental procedures, statistical analysis, and discussion of the results of the experiment are presented, as are suggestions for improving this work and a plan for future research.
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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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L.T. Darryl Diptee, & Jason Baker. (2013). Tackling wicked problems: Suicide in the US military. 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. 931–940). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: Every 24 hours a member of the United States (US) Armed Forces commits suicide, while every hour a US veteran takes his own life. These statistics illuminate a deeply-rooted social crisis which eludes experts and military leaders to this day. Billions of dollars invested in suicide prevention seem to offer little relief for active duty servicemen and veterans alike. Military suicide is framed as a wicked problem and the new and exciting theory of Chronic Emotional Atrophy (CEA) is proposed to help explain causes of suicidal ideation in the military. A holistic crisis management strategy via information systems is presented in this work. Depressive symptoms exhibited by military members in emotionally suppressed environments closely parallel those phenomena exhibited by medical patients suffering from frontal lobe damage. The prospective psychiatric information system solution provides frontal lobe stimulation (FLS) to mitigate CEA and suicidal ideation.
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Simon French, Emma Carter, & Carmen Niculae. (2006). When experts or models disagree. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 547–553). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: In managing crises, decision makers are confronted with a plethora of uncertainties. Many arise because the world is uncertain, particularly in the context of a crisis. But some arise because analyses based upon different, but seemingly equivalent models lead to different forecasts. Other times expert advisors differ in their explanations and predictions of the evolving situation. We argue that when handled correctly such conflict can alert the decision makers to the inherent complexity and uncertainty of the situation and improve their management of the crisis.
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Tim J. Grant, F.L.E. Geugies, & Peter A. Jongejan. (2013). Social media in command & control: A proof-of principle experiment. 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. 52–61). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: The literature on the organizational use of social media in crisis response and management is largely concerned with communication between organizations and the general public (“citizens”). By contrast, there are few papers on the use of social media within organizations for operational purposes. One essential operational capability in such organizations is Command & Control (C2) or its equivalent. Our research focuses on the use of social media in C2 for crisis management at the operational and tactical levels. To enable the use of social media in C2, Jongejan and Grant (2012) extended Reuter, Marx and Pipek's (2011) theoretical framework. In the research reported in this paper, the extended framework was tested by performing a proof-of-principle experiment for a famine relief scenario with human subjects in the laboratory. The results show that more extensive concept demonstrations and field experimentation are justified.
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Rajesh M. Hegde, B.S. Manoj, Bashkar D. Rao, & Ramesh R. Rao. (2006). Emotion detection from speech signals and its applications in supporting enhanced QoS in emergency 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. 82–91). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Networking in the event of disasters requires new hybrid wireless architectures such as Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). Provisioning Quality of Service (QoS) in such networks which are quickly deployed during emergencies demand radical solutions. In this paper, we provide a new QoS approach for voice calls over a wireless mesh networks during emergency situations. According to our scheme, the contention and back-off parameters are modified based on the emotion content in the voice streams. This paper also looks at methods for detecting emotion from an incoming voice call using the speech signal. The issues of interest in such situations are whether the caller is in a state of extreme panic, moderate panic, or in a normal state of behavior. The communication network behavior should be modified to provide differentiated QoS for calls based on the degree of emotion. We use several features extracted from the speech signal like the range of pitch variation, energy in the critical bark band, range of the first three formant variations, and speaking rate among others to discriminate between the three emotional states. At the back end the Gaussian mixture modeling techniques is used to model the three emotional states of the speaker. Since a large number of features increase the computational complexity and time, a feature selection technique is employed based on the Bhattacharya distance, to select the set of features that give maximum discrimination between the classes. These set of features are employed to simulate an emotion recognition system. The results indicate a promising emotion detection rate for the three emotions. We also present the early results on detecting the emotion content in the speech and using this in the MAC layer differentiated QoS provisioning scheme. Our scheme provides an end-to-end delay performance improvement for panicked calls as high as 60% compared to normal calls.
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Diego Klappenbach, Silvia Hollfelder, Andreas Meissner, & Stefan Wilbert. (2004). From analog voice radio to ICT: Data communication and data modeling for the German NBC Reconnaissance Vehicle. In B. C. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2004 – 1st International Workshop on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 145–150). Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: In Germany, the public safety system is largely organized by the German Federal States, which operate, among other equipment, a fleet of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Reconnaissance Vehicles (NBC RVs) to take measurements in contaminated areas. Currently, the NBC RVs, which have been centrally designed and procured by the German Center for Civil Defense, verbally report measured values to a Central Control Unit (CCU) over the assigned Public Safety Organization (PSO) analog voice radio channel. This procedure has several disadvantages. The channel is not secure, puts a natural limit on the achievable throughput and thus on the number of NBC RVs that can be operational simultaneously. Also, while data is being reported, other PSO members are blocked from sending. Finally, a proprietary model is used to structure the NBC RV data, so the data can only be aggregated and evaluated at the CCU but not by any other PSO unit. To overcome these problems, we propose in this paper a heterogeneous and flexible communication platform that complies with reliability and coverage requirements for PSO. More specifically, our proposed system is designed to replace current ways of communicating between NBC RVs and the CCU. We also propose to standardize data structures for data exchange to enable PSO cooperation. A drastically higher number of measured values can then be transmitted to the CCU, and the data can be processed in a much more effective manner in the CCU as well as in cooperating PSO task forces. Ultimately, this will improve NBC RV missions and consequently shorten PSO response time when dealing with NBC disasters. © Proceedings ISCRAM 2004.
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Steven McGee, & Reverend Kathy Graves. (2008). The International Heartbeat Beacon for interoperability & synchronicity of event, alert data. In B. V. de W. F. Fiedrich (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2008 – 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 128–133). Washington, DC: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: The Heartbeat Beacon addresses data temporal / exchange interoperability gaps by stipulating CAP instantiated data exchanges for military, first responder, and commercial stake holder domains by standardizing data exchange formats, symbol sets, event refresh rates enabling direct collaboration with military telemetry systems using commercial products. Multicast radius will be adjustable e.g., increase / decrease with audible tones based on business logic / military mission thread logic according to threshold rules visually displayed as concentric color band expansion / collapse based on DHS five level color / audible advisory schemes. Alert, evacuation, alternate routing of transportation assets, medical triage will then are adjustable. Organizations through router/switch updates via heartbeat messages will enable spontaneous integration of disparate communities of interest allowing the network to be maneuvered in response to unified events and alerts.
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Nicholas Palmer, Roelof Kemp, Thilo Kielmann, & Henri Bal. (2012). RAVEN: Using smartphones for collaborative disaster data collection. 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: In this paper we describe our work in progress on RAVEN, a framework, which makes it possible to build applications for collaborative editing of structured data on Android. RAVEN offers developers compile time tools, which use only the schema to generate all database handling components, edit and list user interfaces, as well as those needed for data synchronization, significantly reducing development effort. In addition, RAVEN also offers the ability to do the same work, entirely at runtime, using only a smartphone. With RAVEN it is possible to construct data oriented applications on phone at any time, including during a disaster. Users can share their applications simply by sharing the database and corresponding schema. Thus, RAVEN enables completely decentralized application creation, sharing, and data distribution, avoiding issues of connectivity to centralized resources. In this paper we show that with RAVEN it is possible to construct a new application at runtime and compare the results with an equivalent custom-built application. © 2012 ISCRAM.
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Thomas Plagemann, Katrine S. Skjelsvik, Matija Puzar, Aslak Johannessen, Ovidiu Drugan, Vera Goebel, et al. (2008). Cross-layer overlay synchronization in sparse MANETs. In B. V. de W. F. Fiedrich (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2008 – 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 546–555). Washington, DC: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks maintain information in the routing table about reachable nodes. In emergency and rescue operations, human groups play an important role. This is visible at the network level as independent network partitions which are for some time stable before their members change through merging or partitioning. We use the information from stable routing tables to optimize the synchronization of Mediators in a Distributed Event Notification System. In a stable partition each node has the same information, thus a single Mediator can efficiently coordinate the synchronization, while all other Mediators just receive updates. We show in our experiments that just a few seconds are needed until routing tables stabilize and all nodes have a common view of the partition. We present a heuristic to determine the proper time to synchronize. Furthermore, we show how exceptions, like disappearing coordinating Mediators and unexpected messages, can be efficiently handled.
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Christian Sell, & Iris Braun. (2009). Using a workflow management system to manage emergency plans. 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: In the event of a disaster in Germany a so-called executive staff is set up. In support of their work they refer to emergency plans, which describe the chronological order of a set of suitable measures for a dedicated event e.g. an evacuation. These plans only exist in the form of large printed documents. Hence, the technical support for executing emergency plans is very limited. In this paper we present a model for a workflow management system (WfMS) for supporting the modeling, execution and management of emergency plans before and during a disaster. It is based on the idea that emergency plans are similar to business processes and can therefore be modeled as workflows. In contrast to most traditional WfMS, the introduced approach supports unstructured activities and their delegation as well as the management of resources. Furthermore, we analyze drawbacks of the current process for disaster management using emergency plans.
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Seungwon Yang, Haeyong Chung, Xiao Lin, Sunshin Lee, Liangzhe Chen, Andrew Wood, et al. (2013). PhaseVis1: What, when, where, and who in visualizing the four phases of emergency management through the lens of social media. 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. 912–917). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: The Four Phase Model of Emergency Management has been widely used in developing emergency/disaster response plans. However, the model has received criticism contrasting the clear phase distinctions in the model with the complex and overlapping nature of phases indicated by empirical evidence. To investigate how phases actually occur, we designed PhaseVis based on visualization principles, and applied it to Hurricane Isaac tweet data. We trained three classification algorithms using the four phases as categories. The 10-fold cross-validation showed that Multi-class SVM performed the best in Precision (0.8) and Naïve Bayes Multinomial performed the best in F-1 score (0.782). The tweet volume in each category was visualized as a ThemeRiver[TM], which shows the 'What' aspect. Other aspects – 'When', 'Where', and 'Who' – Are also integrated. The classification evaluation and a sample use case indicate that PhaseVis has potential utility in disasters, aiding those investigating a large disaster tweet dataset.
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Murray Turoff, Connie White, Linda Plotnick, & Starr Roxanne Hiltz. (2008). Dynamic emergency response management for large scale decision making in extreme events. In B. V. de W. F. Fiedrich (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2008 – 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 462–470). Washington, DC: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: Effective management of a large-scale extreme event requires a system that can quickly adapt to changing needs of the users. There is a critical need for fast decision-making within the time constraints of an ongoing emergency. Extreme events are volatile, change rapidly, and can have unpredictable outcomes. Large, not predetermined groups of experts and decision makers need a system to prepare for a response to a situation never experienced before and to collaborate to respond to the actual event. Extreme events easily require a hundred or more independent agencies and organizations to be involved which usually results in two or more times the number of individuals. To accomplish the above objectives we present a philosophical view of decision support for Emergency Preparedness and Management that has not previously been made explicit in this domain and describe a number of the current research efforts at NJIT that fit into this framework.
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Ka-Ping Yee, Dieterich Lawson, Dominic König, & Dale Zak. (2011). The tablecast data publishing protocol. 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: We describe an interoperability challenge that arose in Haiti, identify the parameters of a general problem in crisis data management, and present a protocol called Tablecast that is designed to address the problem. Tablecast enables crisis organizations to publish, share, and update tables of data in real time. It allows rows and columns of data to be merged from multiple sources, and its incremental update mechanism is designed to support offline editing and data collection. Tablecast uses a publish/subscribe model; the format is based on Atom and employs PubSubHubbub to distribute updates to subscribers.
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