Abstract: Real-time information from microposts like Twitter is useful for applications in the crisis management domain. Currently, that potentially valuable information remains mostly unused by the command staff, mainly because the sheer amount of information cannot be handled efficiently. Sentiment analysis has been shown as an effective tool to detect microposts (such as tweets) that contribute to situational awareness. However, current approaches only focus on two or three emotion classes. But using only tweets with negative emotions for crisis management is not always sufficient. The amount of remaining information is still not manageable or most of the tweets are irrelevant. Thus, a more fine-grained differentiation is needed to identify relevant microposts. In this paper, we show the systematic evaluation of an approach for sentiment analysis on microposts that allows detecting seven emotion classes. A preliminary evaluation of our approach in a crisis related scenario demonstrates the applicability and usefulness.

Abstract: We propose an Information Highway (IH) which addresses interoperability in software systems supporting Humanitarian Crises (HC) and consequently enables efficient decision making at any level: operational, organizational and donor levels. We model our IH by (a) manipulating the semantics stored in knowledge of data repositories, which are interwoven in everyday activities of managing responses to HC and (b) understanding the meaning and the purpose of requests for data retrievals issued in such environments.

Abstract: Innovations in mobile technology allow the use of Internet and smartphones for communicating disasters and coordinating evacuations. However, given the turbulent nature of disaster situations, the people and systems at crisis center are subjected to information overload, which can obstruct timely and accurate information sharing. A dynamic and automated evacuation plan that is able to predict future disaster outcome can be used to coordinate the affected people to safety in times of crisis. In this paper, we present a dynamic version of the shortest path algorithm of Dijkstra. The algorithm is able to compute the shortest path from the user?s location (sent by the smartphone) to the safety area by taking into account possible affected areas in future. We aim at employing the computed routes on our mobile communication system for navigating affected people during emergency and disaster evacuations. Two simulation studies have validated the performance of the developed algorithm.

Abstract: In 2014, the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) carried out a comprehensive crisis communication multi-sector exercise. To evaluate communication in exercises there is a need for involving the public as they are the primary target group in most crises. Systematically involving the public in evaluation of exercises has only been done a few times in Sweden and there are no known international attempts. We therefore developed a method where a representative sample of 2 000 persons was drawn from the Swedish population register and invited to assess communication during the exercise. The so-called ?Public Network? finally consisted of 99 people who contributed extensively with 395 assessment questionnaires. This paper describes the method, the results and experiences. We encourage other organizations to involve the public in exercises for evaluation purposes. The results show that there is a willingness among the public to contribute to the development of crisis preparedness.

Abstract: In rapid-onset disasters the time needed for evacuation is crucial. Aside from the behaviour of the population, the
road network plays a fundamental role. It serves as a medium to reach a safe area. This study analyses the entire
evacuation process, from decision-making up to the arrival at an evacuation zone by combining standardised
questionnaires and GIS-based simulation. Based on a case study in the Chilean community of Talcahuano, an
event-based past scenario and a hypothetical future scenario is investigated, integrating the affected population in
the research process. The main problem identified in past evacuations has been time delay due to congestions,
which also is evident in the results of the hypothetical future scenario. A result which supports evacuation by foot.
This paper argues that a combination of scientific methods is essential for analysing evacuation and to reduce the
risk due to time delay, critical route and transport medium choice.

Abstract: In aiming to decrease the number of casualties and people with difficulty in wide-area evacuations due to a large earthquake, it is highly important to visualize and quantify the potential danger in residential areas. In this paper, we construct a multi-agent simulation model, which describes property damage (such as building-collapse, the spread of fire and blocking of streets) and people?s evacuation behavior after an earthquake occurring. Using this simulation model, we quantify the wide-area evacuation difficulty in densely-built wooden residential areas, and evaluate the past project to improve buildings and streets based on this indicator. Furthermore, we demonstrate the effects of adding new evacuation routes between two intersections of streets with narrow width and long distance. Through these case studies, the effectiveness of our simulation model on urban disaster mitigation planning is shown.

Abstract: In order to evacuate smoothly and safely at a large earthquake, it is important to obtain the information on property damages (such as street-blockage and fire) and on evacuation areas by hearsay, guidance and bulletin boards. In this paper, we construct a model, which describes wide-area evacuation, information-hearsay among evacuees and guidance behavior. Using this model, we evaluate the influence of information-hearsay on wide-area evacuation in terms of the evacuation time and the risk on evacuation routes. Simulation results demonstrate that the locational information of evacuation areas and damages is the most helpful for people who are unfamiliar with an area. In addition, we discuss the effective and efficient methods of evacuation guidance. The results show that the guides contribute to reducing the evacuation time and the risk on evacuation routes of evacuees, and sharing information among guides enables more efficient and safer evacuation / guidance.

Abstract: This paper introduces ZEUS, a novel software tool for the management of large-scale evacuations. The tasks ZEUS supports were derived from two Standard Operating Procedures, developed on demand of the German federal states. To this date, the authors are not aware of another software tool that gives technical support to the management and control of large-scale evacuations as ZEUS does. It comprises functionalities to (pre-)plan a large-scale evacuation, as well as functions for the management of the flow of evacuees during an evacuation situation. This paper describes how the requirements of ZEUS were derived from the two named planning frameworks and how use-cases were developed to meet the requirements; these use-cases were conceptualized as different steps of a workflow. In an evaluation, the paper gives credit how ZEUS can provide technical support for the evaluation of large-scale evacuations. ZEUS will undergo a two-staged review process: first, a controlled theoretical scenario is tested and, upon successful completion, a practical test on a large scale will be executed.

Abstract: The importance of distinguishing between direct and indirect losses of disasters is stressed. In order to estimate indirect losses, a conceptual framework of direct and indirect losses is presented. For the case of the Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) Earthquake of 1995, direct stock losses of both the manufacturing and the commercial sectors record almost same size of big damage. As for indirect flow losses, the commercial and the other services sectors show far greater damage than the manufacturing sector. A careful statistical analysis of indirect losses using the gross regional product in the stricken area presents a new finding that the lost product and income in terms of estimated indirect losses are quite large and continue to arise for longer than 10 years, mounting to some 14 trillion yen (about US$0.13 trillion). Disaster management policy should be improved by paying attention not only to direct losses but also to indirect losses.

Abstract: Concepts such as trust, shared understanding, cultural differences, mental workload, and organizational structure all impact upon the effectiveness of an organization (e.g., Tindale & Kameda, 2000), and even more so in the context of large scale multinational operations (e.g, Smith, Granlund, & Lindgen, 2010). In order to study these concepts we plan a multinational, distributed experiment with participants from three nations collaborating in the same virtual environment: Canadian, British, and Swedish participants will work together as part of a multinational MTS to deal with a complex task and gain control of a crisis situation. Empirical research on MTS remains limited (see, e.g., DeChurch & Marks, 2006) particularly at the multinational level where the investigation of MTS has been so far focused on case studies and exercises (e.g., Goodwin, Essens, & Smith, 2012). Therefore, there is a need to empirically study multinational MTS in order to assess the specific issues that multinational operations face, notably cultural and languages differences. The simulation environment used as experimental platform for this project is C3Fire (www.c3fire.org, Granlund & Granlund, 2011). C3Fire creates an environment whereby teams must work together to resolve a crisis in the firefighting domain, with the goal of evacuating people in critical areas, putting out the forest fire, and protecting buildings and other areas of value from the burning forest fire. This platform makes it possible to study participants' collaborative processes when dealing with a set of crisis scenarios in the context of a simulated emergency response situation. To deal efficiently with the crisis management operation, participants need to prioritize between different objectives, identify and protect critical areas, and plan and implement activities based on given resources. All these tasks are distributed between team members, compelling participants to exchange information and coordinate within and between teams to execute the task. The task is divided into three areas of responsibility as follows: 1) Information and Planning, responsible for situation assessment and providing the operating picture; 2) Operation and Logistic, responsible for intervention and resource management; and 3) Search and Rescue, responsible for research and management of civilians. C3Fire is designed to: 1) achieve an optimal compromise between internal and external validity; 2) show flexibility in scenario configuration (spectrum of units and roles – including search and rescue functions; Tremblay et al., 2010), allowing researchers to capture emergency response and crisis management and rapid response planning; 3) be highly configurable for testing many different types of teams (e.g., hierarchical vs. horizontal organizations); and 4) readily provide objective, non-intrusive metrics for assessing teamwork effectiveness (including macrocognitive functions and team processes) as well as quantitative measures of task performance (that take into account conflicting mission goals). © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: One problem affecting crisis management planning teams is overconfidence- An inflated belief that a plan will be successful. In this paper we compared the effect of several different methods for reducing individual team member confidence levels and compared each to a baseline control condition. One hundred and seventy-eight people participated in one of five conditions to evaluate an H1N1 flu epidemic plan in a university context. Over the course of evaluating the plan, participants provided several ratings of confidence in the plan's success and their understanding. We compared several techniques commonly used, such as critique, Pro/Cons generation, Cons only generation and a newer technique, PreMortem, to a baseline condition. The Pro/Cons generation, Cons only generation and the PreMortem technique all reliably reduced confidence levels more than baseline condition. Furthermore, the Premortem method, imagining that a plan has failed and then generating reasons to explain why, reliably reduced confidence more than each of the other conditions, and therefore can be a useful tool for combating overconfidence in crisis management planning. We discuss the results in the context of sensemaking and decision making theory.

Abstract: Coordination deficiencies have been identified after the March 2011 earthquakes in Japan in terms of scheduling and allocation of resources, with time pressure, resource shortages, and especially informational uncertainty being main challenges. We suggest a decision support model that accounts for these challenges by drawing on fuzzy set theory and fuzzy optimization. Based on requirements from practice and the findings of our literature review, the decision model considers the following premises: incidents and rescue units are spatially distributed, rescue units possess specific capabilities, processing is non-preemptive, and informational uncertainty through linguistic assessments is predominant when on-site units vaguely report about incidents and their attributes, or system reports are not exact. We also suggest a Monte Carlo-based heuristic solution procedure and conduct a computational evaluation of different scenarios. We benchmark the results of our heuristic with results yielded through applying a greedy approach. The results indicate that using our Monte Carlo simulation to solve the decision support model inspired by fuzzy set theory can substantially reduce the overall harm. © 2012 ISCRAM.