Aaron Burgman, Nikhil Kalghatgi, Erika Darling, Chris M. Newbern, Kristine Recktenwald, Shawn Chin, et al. (2006). Emergency data analysis via semantic lensing. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 334–338). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Emergency situations often play out over extended geographic regions and can present response personnel with numerous types of data at various level of detail. Such data may be displayed in mapping software tools that organize the data into layers. Sufficiently complex scenarios can result in dense, occluded, and cluttered map displays. We investigated a localized, detail-on-demand filtering strategy called semantic lensing that in certain situations provides a more efficient and desirable approach than filtering global layers for mitigating clutter and occlusion. An initial formal user study with these semantic lenses has shown their value in aiding decision makers during tasks that might occur during detection of and response to emergency situations. Completion times are significantly faster when using lenses, and workloads are significantly lower. Future work will evaluate additional features and task-specific applicability, and may support the distribution of such a lens tool to emergency preparedness and response personnel.
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Tina Comes, Niek Wijngaards, & Frank Schultmann. (2012). Efficient scenario updating in emergency management. 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: Emergency managers need to assess, combine and process large volumes of information with varying degrees of (un)certainty. To keep track of the uncertainties and to facilitate gaining an understanding of the situation, the information is combined into scenarios: stories about the situation and its development. As the situation evolves, typically more information becomes available and already acknowledged information is changed or revised. Meanwhile, decision-makers need to keep track of the scenarios including an assessment whether the infor-mation constituting the scenario is still valid and relevant for their purposes. Standard techniques to support sce-nario updating usually involve complete scenario re-construction. This is far too time-consuming in emergency management. Our approach uses a graph theoretical scenario formalisation to enable efficient scenario updating. MCDA techniques are employed to decide whether information changes are sufficiently important to warrant scenario updating. A brief analysis of the use-case demonstrates a large gain in efficiency. © 2012 ISCRAM.
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John Edmonds, Louiqa Raschid, Hassan Sayyadi, & Shanchan Wu. (2010). Exploiting social media to provide humanitarian users with event search and recommendations. 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: Humanitarian decision makers rely on timely and accurate information for decision-making. Since satisfactory disaster response is key to building public trust and confidence, they need to monitor and track disaster related discourse to gauge public perception and to avert public relations disasters. Social media, e.g., the blogosphere, has empowered citizens to provide content and has increased information diversity. The challenge is to make sense of this diverse and noisy data and interpret results in context. For example, search results can be clustered around an event or occurrence at some geo-location and time. Personalization and recommendations can further filter content and focus on the most relevant and important data. We apply our research on event detection and recommendation to support event based search and apply it to a large blog collection (blog.spinn3r.com).
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Gary M. Fetter, Mauro Falasca, Christopher W. Zobel, & Terry R. Rakes. (2010). A multi-stage decision model for debris disposal operations. 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 shown by Hurricane Katrina, disposing of disaster-generated debris can be quite challenging. Extraordinary amounts of debris far exceeding typical annual amounts of solid waste are almost instantaneously deposited across a widespread area. Although the locations and amounts of debris can be easily summarized looking back after recovery activities have been completed, they are uncertain and difficult at best to estimate as debris operations begin to unfold. Further complicating matters is that the capacity of cleanup resources, which is dependent upon available equipment, labor, and subcontractors, can fluctuate during on-going cleanup operations. As a result, debris coordinators often modify initial resource assignments as more accurate debris estimates and more stable resource capacities become known. In this research, we develop a computer-based decision support system that incorporates a multi-stage programming model to assist decision makers with allocating debris cleanup resources immediately following a crisis event and during ongoing operations as debris volumes and resource capacities become known with increasing certainty.
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Simon French, & Nikolaos Agryris. (2014). Nuclear emergency management: Driven by precedent or international guidance? 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. 483–487). University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University.
Abstract: The NREFS project is re-evaluating the management of radiation accidents, paying attention to environmental, financial and safety issues and to the threat and response phase. In designing our project some two years ago, we were concerned to avoid any assumption that a future accident will be similar to a past accident, in particular the Chernobyl and Fukushima Accidents. After a year of research on the issues to be considered and the criteria that could or should drive the decision making, our concern has increased. We have found that international guidance provided by organisations such as ICRP and IAEA lack the specificity to help decision makers. Precedent set in the handling of earlier accidents provides much clearer and tighter guidance – and, moreover, one may feel that that the public will expect them to follow such precedent. Unfortunately the circumstances of a future accident may make precedent inapplicable. Consequently we believe that there is an urgent need to think more widely about nuclear emergency management.
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Rego Granlund, & Helena Granlund. (2011). GPS impact on performance, response time and communication – A review of three studies. 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: This paper describes the basic work performance analysis from three research projects with a goal to investigate the impact of a decision support system that presents global positioning system (GPS) information to the decision makers in crisis management organizations. The goal was to compare the performance between teams that had access to GPS information in the command post with teams that had access only to paper maps. The method used was controlled experiments with the C3Fire micro-world. A total of 304 participants, forming 48 teams, participated in the three studies. The participants came from three different groups, university students, municipal crisis management organizations and rescue service personnel. The result shows that the performance and communication change depending on if the teams used GPS support or paper maps. The result also shows that the participants' background and perceived complexity of the task have an impact on the results.
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Josune Hernantes, Jose M. Torres, Ana Laugé, Jose Mari Sarriegi, Iztok Starc, Eva Zupancic, et al. (2010). Using GMB methodology on a large crisis model. 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: Mitigating, detecting, evaluating, responding and recovering from crises are highly complex tasks that involve many decision makers (agents). As a consequence using collaborative methods that allow the cooperation among these agents during the crisis management strategy and procedures design is of significant importance. Group Model Building (GMB) is a robust collaborative methodology that has been successfully used for modelling several complex socio-technical problems, where different agents may have diverse perspectives or interests in the problem under analysis. Through the development of a series of exercises, GMB allows the integration of these initially fragmented perspectives. Modellers translate the knowledge elicited from experts during GMB workshops into simulation models that reproduce the behaviour of the problem. This paper presents the use and adaptation of the GMB methodology in a research project about large pan European crises due to outages in the electricity sector.
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Geoffrey Hoare, Jeffrey Nield, Tom Belcuore, & Tom Rich. (2008). Information needs and decision support in health and medical disasters. In B. V. de W. F. Fiedrich (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2008 – 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 778–786). Washington, DC: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: During a disaster, health and medical decision makers need accurate, timely information. However, it is seldom readily available to the right decision makers, at the right time. Quite a number of databases currently exist with information about health and medical organizations which decision makers need during a disaster. Some of these databases have functions that facilitate decision-making and communication before, during and after a disaster. In theory, linking several existing databases will supply this information. Also, other functions can be provided in one package for incident management and monitoring of the preparedness capacity of a State's health and medical systems. But, this has not happened yet in Florida. This research assessed the different users needs, defined the information required to make good decisions and is testing a pilot decision support system of linked databases.
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Satria Hutomo Jihan, & Aviv Segev. (2013). Context ontology for humanitarian assistance in crisis response. 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. 526–535). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: Massive crisis open data is not fully utilized to identify humanitarian needs because most of it is not in a structured format, thus hindering machines to interpret it automatically and process it in a short time into useful information for decision makers. To address these problems, the paper presents a method which merges ontologies and logic rules to represent the humanitarian needs and recommend appropriate humanitarian responses. The main advantage of the method is to identify humanitarian needs and to prioritize humanitarian responses automatically so that the decision makers are not overwhelmed with massive and unrelated information and can focus more on implementing the solutions. The method is implemented on real data from the Hurricane Wilma crisis. The use of the method in the hurricane Wilma crisis shows the potential abilities to identify the humanitarian needs in specific places and to prioritize humanitarian responses in real time.
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Stella Moehrle. (2012). Generic self-learning decision support system for large-scale disasters. 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: Large-scale disasters, particularly failures of critical infrastructures, are exceptional situations which cannot be solved with standard countermeasures. The crises are complex and the decision makers face acute time pressure to respond to the disaster. IT based decision support systems provide potential solutions and assist the decision making process. Many decision support systems in emergency response and management concentrate on one kind of disaster. Moreover, complex structures are modeled and recommendations are made rule-based. This work in progress paper describes the first steps towards the development of a generic and self-learning decision support system. The methodology used is case-based reasoning. The paper concludes with a sample emergency decision process. © 2012 ISCRAM.
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Stella Moehrle. (2014). On the assessment of disaster management strategies. 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. 215–219). University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University.
Abstract: Decision support systems can recommend strategies for disaster management, which can be further discussed by decision-makers. To provide rationales for the recommendations, the strategies need to be assessed according to relevant criteria. If several strategies are available, the criteria can be used for ranking the strategies. This paper addresses the issue concerning the choice of suitable criteria from several perspectives. The assessment integrates concepts on robustness, experience with regard to the implementation of a strategy, quantifiable ratios which can be deduced from simulations, and system-specific parameters. Objectives are to facilitate transparency with respect to the assessments, to provide a basis for discussions concerning the strategies, and to preserve adaptability and flexibility to account for the variability of disasters and users' preferences. The assessment should be used for ranking solutions gained from a case-based reasoning system and to reveal contributions of criteria values to the overall assessment.
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Kathleen A. Moore, Andrea H. Tapia, & Christopher Griffin. (2013). Research in progress: Understanding how emergency managers evaluate crowdsourced data: A trust game-based approach. 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. 272–277). KIT; Baden-Baden: Karlsruher Institut fur Technologie.
Abstract: The use, or barriers to use, of crowdsourced data by emergency managers has been a significant topic of scholarly discussion during the past several years. The single strongest barrier to use has been identified as one of data quality (Tapia, et. al, 2011). We argue that within this environment the Emergency Manager (EM) acts as a decision-maker and evaluator of crowdsourced data. The final judgement on whether to incorporate crowdsourced data into a Crisis response lies with the EM. In this paper we make a brief argument for the role of EM as trustworthy data analyst and then propose a model for capturing the trust-analytical behavior through game theory (Griffin, et. al, 2012). Lastly, we propose a simple computer game, which uses our model through which we will capture EM trust-analytical behavior though a future empirical data collection effort.
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Usha Satish, & Siegfried Streufert. (2004). Training to defend: Strategic management simulations. In B. C. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2004 – 1st International Workshop on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 157–160). Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Terrorism is defined by a philosophy of revolutionary violence and a commitment to the destruction of government power. Of course, one way to reduce vulnerability to these impacts is heightened security. However, we must be a step ahead of terrorists: we must prevent their intended actions whenever possible. Most measures of decision-making competence focus on “content,” i.e. on “what” decision makers know, on what their thought processes are, and on whether the decisions they make are correct. However complex, volatile, ambiguous task environments involving uncertainty and delayed feedback provide challenges and generate levels of stress, which interfere with appropriate decision making. A “correct” decision may not be easily available. Many well-trained individuals will be at a loss and may make errors (e.g., because they may select the most immediately evident, yet not the most appropriate options). The use of a well-validated methodology, Strategic Management Simulations (SMS) to assess and train decision makers is presented. © Proceedings ISCRAM 2004.
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T.L. Van Zyl, C. Parbhoo, Moodley, Cwela, D. Umuhoza, P. Shabangu, et al. (2009). IT infrastructure enabling open access for flood risk preparedness in South Africa. 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 paper focuses on the information technology infrastructure required for the evaluation and monitoring of risk relating to floods in South Africa. It may be argued that in the context of developing countries, flood preparedness is more valuable than the actual response to a flood disaster. The paper looks at this flood preparedness in the context of informal and semi-formal settlements. An information technology infrastructure is proposed that will allow decision makers to be alerted to possible flood high risk areas, and in so doing maximise preparedness.
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