Babajide Osatuyi, & Michael J. Chumer. (2010). An empirical investigation of alert notifications: A temporal analysis approach. 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: As the deployment of situational awareness mechanisms such as geothermal sensors, use of social network sites, and information and communication technologies (e.g., cell phones) become increasingly widespread to emergency responders, the problem of alert analysis has become very important. Broadcast of large amounts of alerts sent back to command centers for processing may impair the ability of analysts to connect dots that may otherwise adequately enable them to make informed decisions in a timely fashion. This paper investigates trends and patterns embedded in alert notifications generated over a given period of time in order to uncover correlations that may exist in the data. Data for this study are obtained from the National Center for Crisis and Continuity Coordination (NC4). We employ classical time series analysis to understand, explain and predict trends and patterns in the data. This work presents results obtained thus far in the quest for the effect of passage of time on alert patterns. Implications of this work in practice and research are discussed.
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Jack Pagotto, & Darrell O'Donnell. (2012). Canada's multi-agency situational awareness system – Keeping it simple. 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: The Canadian Multi-Agency Situational Awareness System (MASAS) is rapidly becoming Canada's national system for exchanging emergency management incident-relevant information amongst multiple agencies and jurisdictions. Through the use of structured information aligned with open standards, and a centrally managed open architecture, MASAS provides a trusted virtual community with the ability to seamlessly exchange emergency management information. MASAS offers an information exchange architecture that is based around a highly resilient system of data aggregation hubs that are easily accessible directly or through third party commercial tools by emergency management officials at all levels, from the smallest community in the most remote areas of Canada's north to key federal stakeholders such as the federal Government Operations Centre or the Canadian military. This paper highlights the key design principles, experimental activities, and technology implementation strategies that are positioning MASAS as a Canadian success story in the making – from coast to coast to coast. © 2012 ISCRAM.
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Linda Plotnick, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, & Matthew Burns. (2012). For whom the siren sounds: Public perceptions of outdoor warning sirens in northeast Alabama. 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 tornado-prone Alabama, outdoor emergency sirens are used as a major component of the Emergency Alert and Notification System. However there have been no studies to date of the effectiveness of these sirens in Calhoun County. In April 2011 a major tornado swept through this area of northeast Alabama, leaving in its wake over 300 fatalities and massive destruction. This preliminary study examines public perceptions and reactions to the sirens for notification of tornadoes. Faculty and students of a mid-sized university in Calhoun County, Alabama were surveyed before and after the devastating 2011 tornado. Although the respondents find the sirens helpful, they have difficulty understanding the tones and spoken messages emitted by the sirens. Concerns about tornadoes did increase slightly after the 2011 tornado. Those who did experience an increase in concern were likely to change their behavior in preparations and response to tornadoes. © 2012 ISCRAM.
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Yrjo Raivio, & Ronja Addams-Moring. (2006). Mobile emergency announcements with really simple syndication (RSS 2.0). In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 164–171). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Broadcasting methods, such as the radio, the television and sirens, have been the main choices for delivering emergency announcements (EA)-Also called public warnings, emergency alerts or citizens warnings-during the last 60 odd years. Unfortunately, broadcast EAs do not reach all people, and the reason for the EA and the actions required can remain unclear. Today, the high penetration of personal mobile phones offers new options to authorities. As a result, a new research and implementation area, Mobile Emergency Announcement (MEA), has emerged. The GSM Short Message System (SMS) is already deployed for MEA delivery. Simultaneously, in the World Wide Web (WWW) a novel news delivery technology, called Really Simple Syndication 2.0 (RSS) is spreading. This paper describes a concept for how RSS can be harnessed for MEA use. First, MEA requirements are briefly reviewed. Second, the eXtended Markup Language (XML) based Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) and the syndication protocol RSS 2.0 are presented. Third, the central implementation issues are presented. Finally, the proposed solution is critically reviewed.
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Saloni JD Vaghela, & Patrick C. Shih. (2018). WalkSafe: College Campus Safety App. In Kees Boersma, & Brian Tomaszeski (Eds.), ISCRAM 2018 Conference Proceedings – 15th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 983–993). Rochester, NY (USA): Rochester Institute of Technology.
Abstract: WalkSafe is a location-based app that notifies users of emergencies around them. The app is compared to The Pennsylvania State University's emergency notification system – PSUAlert, which provides time-based alerts. We identify weakness of the existing PSUAlert system and address them by introducing a location-based emergency notification system with the records of past incidents along with the type of emergency with respect to the user's location. We gathered user perception from 43 survey respondents that informed the design of the WalkSafe app. We use mixed-methods approach to evaluate WalkSafe with PSUAlert system as a baseline. We assess both systems with 22 participants by notifying them of the fake emergencies and asking them to use both systems to understand details regarding the emergency and its location. The pre- and post-surveys are evaluated using content analysis and paired t-test. Participant reported higher perceived convenience, perceived security, willingness to use, and willingness to share when using WalkSafe.
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Nabil Seddigh, Biswajit Nandy, & John Lambadaris. (2006). An internet public alerting system: A canadian experience. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 141–146). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Public officials have the responsibility of giving public directions and issuing warnings in the event of an emergency. Traditionally, siren systems, radio and television have been used as the primary means for issuing public alerts. Recently, there has been increased interest in evaluating the Internet's suitability for issuing public alerts during times of emergency. This paper presents a Canadian experience with the design and trials of an Internet-based emergency public alerting system (IPAS). We discuss a proposed set of requirements and system architecture. We also include a discussion of the challenges to be overcome in developing such systems and report on experiments and field trials using the IPAS system developed during this project. Our objective is to provide motivation for future research and industry work in this area.
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Pekka Sillberg, Petri Rantanen, Mika Saari, Jari Leppäniemi, Jari Soini, & Hannu Jaakkola. (2009). Towards an IP-based alert message delivery system. 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: Advancements in technology have provided new opportunities for the delivery of emergency messages. However, some of the issues concerning data security and technical solutions are quite different from the problems of the traditional means of communication. The Internet poses its own set of challenges. This paper presents a few emergency messaging system proposals made by other researchers and also introduces a new proposition put forward by the authors of this paper. This will demonstrate how to use client-server architecture to deliver emergency alert messages in IP-based networks. The proposed system uses Atom feeds to deliver alert messages and also provides a feedback channel for client data. In this scenario clients could have any kind of device from mobile terminals to desktop computers.
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Marnix W.B. Eysink Smeets, & Simone Sillem. (2005). Intelligent SMS as an effective public warning system: The inspiring results of a dutch pilot project. In B. C. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2005 – 2nd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 317–321). Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: The classic Dutch disaster-warning system (the 'siren') is not as effective as it should be. The alarm is not heard by 37% of the population, not all the people that hear the siren do take it seriously. A public-warning system was developed based on so-called 'intelligent SMS'. This system was tested in 2004 among 700 inhabitants of the city of Vlaardingen (region Rotterdam-Rijnmond). The University of Delft conducted an intensive evaluation. The evaluation shows that use of SMS is technically feasible. It diminishes the part of the population that is not reached is by approx. 50%. The public is now not only warned that 'something is going on' but is informed by SMS of the nature of the threat ánd on what to do. The public perceives intelligent SMS as the most effective warning system. Based on the pilot, the disaster-management authority of the region Rotterdam-Rijnmond, with some 1.2 million inhabitants, decided to structurally implement the system in the whole region in 2005.
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Keri K. Stephens, Jessica L. Ford, Ashley Barrett, & Michael J. Mahometa. (2014). Alert networks of ICTs and sources in campus emergencies. In and P.C. Shih. L. Plotnick M. S. P. S.R. Hiltz (Ed.), ISCRAM 2014 Conference Proceedings – 11th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 652–661). University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University.
Abstract: This study contributes an understanding of how ICTs and varying information sources work together during emergency alerts. It builds on the prior work on campus active shooter events by examining an organization that used a range of ICTs including mobile devices, social media, organizational tools, and news media, to notify their stakeholders about an emergency. The study design used a survey to capture the responses from a random sample of over 1000 stakeholders-students, faculty, and staff-who were notified of an active shooter emergency. The findings from the first three notifications suggest that messages reaching the most stakeholders were (a) sent by official sources through ICTs like mobile phones; (b) official email communication, and (c) messages that included face-to-face communication. While 11 different ICTs were included in the study, mass media (i.e., television and radio), and social media (Twitter and Facebook) did not function substantially in the emergency alert process.
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Teresa Gordon, Hamish Keith, & Todd Velvin. (2018). Insight into the Emergency Mobile Alert system and Public Information Management in New Zealand Insight into the Emergency Mobile Alert system and Public Information Management in New Zealand. In Kristin Stock, & Deborah Bunker (Eds.), Proceedings of ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience – 1st International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Asia Pacific. (pp. 103–109). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: New Plymouth city's water supply infrastructure suffered major damage as Ex-Tropical Cyclone Gita passed over New Zealand on 20 February 2018. By 1950 hours a State of Local Emergency had been declared due to the disruption of the drinking water supply in New Plymouth and power supply across the region. This report focuses on the feedback received by the Taranaki CDEM Group Public Information Management team following activation of the Emergency Mobile Alert (EMA) system on the evening of Wednesday 21 February 2018, to warn people in New Plymouth District that tap water must be boiled. The report gives a practitioner's insight into making the decision to send one of New Zealand's first EMAs and the subsequent handset issues experienced by members of the public with this new system, including various misunderstandings about how the EMA system works.
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Thomas J. Terry Jr. (2006). Electronic disease reporting & 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. 569–578). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) developed an Electronic Disease Reporting & Management System (EDRMS) that has the capability for the rapid collection, analysis, and dissemination of suspected outbreaks including Chemical and Bio-Terrorism events. Prior to EDRMS, agencies relied on dis-jointed phone and fax reporting and rudimentary methods for data collection, dissemination, follow-up, and remuneration. The objective of this system is to allow collaborative recognition across all the hospitals and public health offices in the state of New Jersey to detect as soon as possible an epidemic occurring of a known or unknown type.
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Thomas Papadimos, Nick Pantelidis, Stelios Andreadis, Aristeidis Bozas, Ilias Gialampoukidis, Stefanos Vrochidis, et al. (2022). Real-time Alert Framework for Fire Incidents Using Multimodal Event Detection on Social Media Streams. In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 623–635). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: The frequency of wildfires is growing day by day due to vastly climate changes. Forest fires can have a severe impact on human lives and the environment, which can be minimised if the population has early and accurate warning mechanisms. To date, social media are able to contribute to early warning with the additional, crowd-sourced information they can provide to the emergency response workers during a crisis event. Nevertheless, the detection of real-world fire incidents using social media data, while filtering out the unavoidable noise, remains a challenging task. In this paper, we present an alert framework for the real-time detection of fire events and we propose a novel multimodal event detection model, which fuses both probabilistic and graph methodologies and is evaluated on the largest fires in Spain during 2019.
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Tzu-Yin CHANG, Shang-Yu Wu, & Jyun-Yuan Chen. (2018). Mobile Communication Technology and Cell Broadcast Service for Emergency Alerts. In Kristin Stock, & Deborah Bunker (Eds.), Proceedings of ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience – 1st International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Asia Pacific. (pp. 97–102). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: Taiwan is located in the collision zones between two continental plates collide. From the perspective of plate tectonics, the paleo-tectonic environment of the Taiwan and its surrounding areas are rather complex and active due to the tectonic compression of the Eurasian Plate and Philippine Sea Plate. This has resulted in frequent earthquakes in Taiwan. In addition, the tropical and subtropical climate drives not only weathering and erosion of surface rocks, but also typhoon or monsoon triggered torrential and heavy rains in summer and autumn. For downstream land subsidence areas with poor discharge capacity, it is therefore often to have serious floods and resulted in large-scale disasters that endanger citizens' lives and property. Affected by climate change, high urban density and overexploitation of land resources, Taiwan has a substantial increase in natural disasters over the last couple of years. As the country is confronted by unfavorable environment and climate conditions, how disaster alerts and information are accurately and timely released has become an important topic for facilitating the evacuation of citizens and dispatch of disaster relief personnel. This study has combined the mobile communications technology to enable our government to, with the Cell Broadcast Service (CBS), instantly send messages to all 4G and 3G (WCDMA) mobile users within the coverage of designated base stations and without being affected by the network congestion through independent channels. This will help timely notify citizens to evacuate and reduce casualties.
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Ulrich Meissen, Frank Fuchs-Kittowski, Michael Jendreck, Stefan Pfennigschmidt, Markus Hardt, & Agnès Voisard. (2017). A general system architecture and design for the coordination of volunteers for agile disaster response. 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. 890–900). Albi, France: Iscram.
Abstract: In the recent decade the evolvement and widespread success of new technologies in particular in the field of computing power, network bandwidth, mobile networks and wearable devices have prepared the foundation for completely new approaches in crisis management. Currently, we are at the edge that such new technologies for crisis management are becoming a real and practically applicable option, e.g. in the field of alerting, crowdsourcing, and crowdtasking. In parallel, we witness in the recent years that citizens are more and more willing to help during crisis and disasters, thus providing a large – yet unused – potential for agile support in disaster preparation and response. In many disaster situations the emergency personnel reach the limits of their capabilities. In particular during the isolation phase the support of such volunteers can be a valuable benefit for disaster response. With the help of new technologies crisis management can provide current on-site information via mobile devices in real time as well as organize and coordinate the activities of the volunteers at specific locations. In this paper we present the results of the research project ENSURE: a general architecture and a system design for the coordination of spontaneous volunteers for agile disaster response. With the expected broader implementation of such systems in disaster management in the future it is inevitable to elaborate such common technological foundations for practical mass applications.
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Nuwan Waidyanatha, Tharaka Wilfred, Kasun Perera, Manoj Silva, & Brenda Burell. (2012). Complexity and usability of voice-enabled alerting and situational reporting decoupled systems. 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: Telephone calls are the predominant telecommunication mode in Sri Lanka. Leveraging voice-based applications for disaster communication would be acceptable and sustainable. The findings in this paper are from an experiment concerning interactive voice for connecting community-based emergency field operatives with their central coordination hub. Challenge was in interchanging the Freedom Fone (FF) Interactive Voice Response (IVR) generated, Sinhala and Tamil language, speech data with the text-based 'Sahana' disaster management system for analysis and decision support. Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) interoperable content standard was adopted for mediation. Low quality voice data resulting in incomplete information was a barrier to automating transformations between text and speech. Replacing those processes with human procedure significantly degrades the reliability. Moreover, human interaction with decoupled software systems, to accomplish the sequence of tasks, points to instabilities. This paper discusses the complexities and usability shortcomings discovered through controlled-exercises in Sri Lanka. © 2012 ISCRAM.
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Karl Wolf. (2013). Location information interoperability of CAP and PIDF-LO for early warning systems. 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. 381–385). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) is an open standard, which is universally used for early warning systems and other emergency information systems. Future early warning systems will also disseminate CAP warning messages to location aware Internet devices, such as notebooks, Internet phones or Internet-enabled television sets. These Internet devices have the option to acquire their current location as a Presence Information Data Format – Location Object (PIDF-LO) document by the protocols and means developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). When an Internet device receives a CAP message, determination of whether this alert is relevant to the user at the current location is crucial. However, the civic address format of PIDF-LO is not interoperable with CAP. This paper describes these interoperability issues, which were collected during a prototype implementation and proposes a mapping of PIDF-LO location elements to CAP to achieve interoperability.
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Philip Fei Wu. (2009). User acceptance of emergency alert technology: A case study. 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: The purpose of the study is to investigate the factors affecting the user acceptance of emergency alert systems. By studying the adoption of a SMS-based alert system at a large public university in the United States, this paper explores the research question: How are different motivational factors related to the intention and behavior of using emergency alert technology? Through a mixed-methods approach, the study demonstrates a “deepening” effort in applying the technology acceptance model (TAM) to emergency response system, drawing attention to the holistic nature of motivation-behavior in technology acceptance. Results of this research show that: The concept of usefulness has multiple levels of meanings to its intended users; the ease of use is more about the users' ability to control the system behavior; and subjective norm need to be examined with relation to its originating source.
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