Dragos Datcu, & Leon J.M. Rothkrantz. (2008). A Dialog Action Manager for automatic crisis management. In B. V. de W. F. Fiedrich (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2008 – 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 384–393). Washington, DC: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: This paper presents the results of our research on the development of a Dialog Action Manager-DAM as part of a complex crisis management system. Imagine the utility of such an automatic system to detect the crisis and to provide support to people in contexts similar to what happened recently at the underground in London and Madrid. Preventing and handling the scenarios of terrorism and other crisis are nowadays maybe the most important issues for a modern and safe society. In order to automate the crisis support, DAM simulates the behavior of an employee at the crisis centre handling telephone calls from human observers. Firstly, the system has to mimic the natural support for the paradigm 'do you hear me?' and next for the paradigm 'do you understand me?'. The people witnessing the crisis event as well as human experts provide reports and expertise according to their observations and knowledge on the crisis. The system knowledge and the data communication follow the XML format specifications. The system is centered on the results of our previous work on creating a user-centered multimodal reporting tool that works on mobile devices. In our paper we describe the mechanisms for creating an automatic DAM system that is able to analyze the user messages, to identify and track the crisis contexts, to support dialogs for crisis information disambiguation and to generate feedback in the form of advice to the users. The reasoning is done by using a data frame and rule based system architecture and an alternative Bayesian Network approach. In the paper we also present a series of experiments we have attempted in our endeavor to correctly identify natural solutions for the crisis situations.
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Siska Fitrianie, Zhenke Yang, & Leon J.M. Rothkrantz. (2008). Developing concept-based user interface using icons for reporting observations. In B. V. de W. F. Fiedrich (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2008 – 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 394–405). Washington, DC: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: In recent years, we have developed a visual communication interface for reporting observations in which messages can be constructed using a spatial arrangement of icons. Each icon on the interface represents a concept or idea. This paper reports about research on a visual language interface, which allows users to create structured messages of icon strings simultaneously in a two-dimensional parallel and spatial configuration. The developed system provides drawing tools and predefined sets of icons that support a free and natural way to sketch and describe crisis situations. A coherent and context dependent interpretation of the icon configuration can be constructed by the employment of ontology. In addition, the interface is also able to convert the interpretation into crisis scenarios as feedback to the user on his/her input.
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John M. McGuirl, Nadine B. Sarter, & David D. Woods. (2008). Seeing is believing?: The effects of real-time, image-based feedback on emergency management decision-making. In B. V. de W. F. Fiedrich (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2008 – 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 406–414). Washington, DC: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
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.
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