Abstract: A large inter-organizational Swedish crisis management exercise was carried out during two months in 2011. It was unique in the sense that it combined both short-term and long-term crisis management involving more than 60 organizations and 6000 participants. This has never been done before in this context and therefore required an elaborated and sophisticated exercise concept. The purpose of this paper is to present the concept of the exercise as well as lessons learned about the concept and the Swedish crisis management system. The exercise was composed of three different phases each involving different methods with respect to exercising and evaluating effective and efficient crisis management. The general conclusion is that the exercise enabled analyzes and handling of both short-term and long-term crisis management. This implies that the exercise concept could be of great use in Sweden and other countries where emergencies call for cooperation between numerous distributed organizations. © 2012 ISCRAM.

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: Research in emergency response systems has produced significant literature in a very short span of time. We review a corpus of published works on how Information Communication Technology (ICT) is being utilized and the type of tasks ICT attempts to support in the event of a crisis due to disasters, whether natural or man-made. In our research, we have been able to distinguish eight types of tasks supported by technology during a disaster. We list some of these technologies used by the public, practitioners and researchers to illustrate the current trends of technology usage. We also identify gaps and technology needs that require our attention. Given the increasing frequency and severity of disasters, this research is timely as it (1) contributes to our understanding of the trends of development and technology use during times of crises and (2) identifies potential areas for future work to improve ICT's role during times of emergency. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: Information sharing is crucial in responding to and managing crises. A great variety of organizations respond to crises, ranging from international organizations, through non-governmental organizations, commercial suppliers, government ministries, and the media, to individual volunteers. At best, they collaborate to combine their respective strengths in creating synergy. At worst, they deconflict their operations so that the one does not get in the way of the other. In either case, the organizations must communicate with one another. Previous research has shown that this communication takes the form of an information market. This paper considers the possible mechanisms for information markets in humanitarian and military coalitions. While there has been work on market mechanisms in the economics literature, this needs to be adapted for the exchange of information and information services instead of physical goods and services. This paper proposes a taxonomy of market mechanisms that is tailored to information sharing within coalitions. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: ALARM is a modular IT-solution to support emergency medical service (EMS) providers and rescue staff in mass casualty incident response and training. Seven modules were implemented, covering the entire process from preliminary triage, treatment support and resource management to tactical information and registration. Communication technology is used to close information and documentation gaps. The system uses medical algorithms and telemedicine to improve patient treatment. The ALARM system generates logs automatically including procedural time stamps and outcome factors such as triage and transport categories. This allows an objective analysis and comparison of missions and opens a new approach to evidence based MCI management and training. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: In this paper we overview the ongoing research into the application of case-based reasoning in emergency management, based on which we propose a new approach for representation of large-scale disaster cases. The approach takes the environmental factors into account, and the case is organized according to key scenes, rather than disaster types. Each scene consists of inherent attributes, which are concerned with the disaster type, and environment attributes, which usually facilitate the adjustment of the decision-making, and sometimes play crucial role. To describe the environment attributes, the fuzzy sets are employed to take use of the non-quantitative information. The nearness of the fuzzy sets is used to retrieve the similar case. Based on this approach, the case retrieval could even extract the case with different type but similar environment, supposing the inherent attribute is analogous. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: The importance of situation awareness systems in crisis-management scenarios cannot be emphasised enough. These systems enable entire disaster situations to be mapped out in a real-time fashion thereby aiding significantly in human decision-making and the necessary positioning, management and deployment of resources. As a result of the core role these systems play in responding to crises, it is vital that they are highly usable and optimized for human cognition and experience. In this paper we consider this reality in the context of an initial evaluation of the visualisation interface of a situation-awareness tool called Secure Situation Awareness (SSA). Our evaluation seeks to gather useful feedback from potential end-users on the usability of the tool's interface to feed into the design and development of interfaces for similar systems. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: We examined to what extent a MultiTouch Table (MTT) can support a collaborative Operational Planning Asset Distribution task as compared to traditional Spreadsheet methods. Participants were given different and complementary specialist roles and were then asked to distribute different sets of assets over an area of Operations with multiple known and unknown 'needs'. Additionally, participants had to satisfy a series of real time intelligence recommendations regarding potential needs. Of interest were subjective usability ratings and objective performance measures in terms of need fulfillment and satisfying intelligence recommendations. We found that on all but one usability measure participants rated the MTT more positively than the Spreadsheets. There was also a non-significant trend for greater needs fulfillment and resolving intelligence recommendations using the MTT than the spreadsheets. On the basis of the results we suggest that MTT technology offers a viable tool for supporting collaborative Asset Distribution tasks in general. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: We have been investigating new decision support methods for emergency responders. Most recently, we have added to our decision support prototype the concept of “badges”: symbols that cue decision makers to the top-ranked option(s) that are the recommended alternatives for a particular decision. This paper provides the rationale for badges, a description of the initial implementation, results from our first experiment with badges, and a discussion of the next steps. As a report on work-in-progress, the primary contribution of this paper is the description of the concept of badges and its proposed use for emergency response decision making. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: Understanding that disasters and conflicts do not occur in a vacuum, but are integrally linked to the broader context in which they take place, building resilience within both state and society structures becomes a crucial tool to speed recovery and lessen the likelihood of recurrence as local and institutional capacities are put in place to respond to, manage and reduce emerging risks. Since, 2008, United Nations Development Programme in Sudan has through its Crisis and Recovery Mapping and Analysis Project been developing a participatory mapping and analysis methodology to enhance crisis responsiveness and evidence-based strategic planning both within the United Nations system and national government. Using innovative technologies and GIS, sensitive issues are contextualized and depoliticized through novel correlations and visualisations, allowing previously contesting state and society actors to jointly identify priorities for intervention and response. The process has fostered an open dialogue, strengthening the capacities of local actors to respond to emerging crises in a timely and appropriate manner. Participatory mapping has thus become a key tool in managing complexities in peacebuilding and recovery in post-crisis settings. © 2012 ISCRAM.

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.

Abstract: The need for better team measurement in realistic environments has been recognized as one of the key challenges that characterize the field of team work studies (Salas, Cooke, & Rosen, 2008). This challenge is particularly hard to address in the context of emergency response, due to the inherent complexity and dynamism of the domain. Emergency response is part of the emergency management cycle, and refers to the mobilization of the adequate actors and resources to mitigate the impact of an incident on the public and on the environment (Abrahamsson, Hassel, and Tehler, 2010). Emergency response often requires the cooperation of multiple agencies such as police, medical, and fire services, consequently increasing the complexity of such operations. We report of how SYnRGY – a human-centered emergency response technological tool – is embedded with extensive measurement and simulation capabilities to allow tracing of experts' task models in a silent and reliable way. We describe how these capabilities; combined with an innovative modeling technique – dynamic cognitive task modeling – can be used to extract experts' representations of the task. We discuss the importance of such a model for training, improvement of emergency response procedures and development of emergency response tools. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: Most definitions of disaster resilience incorporate both the capacity to resist the initial impact of a disaster and the ability to recover after it occurs. Being able to characterize and analyze resilient behavior can lead to improved understanding not only of the capabilities of a given system, but also of the effectiveness of different strategies for improving its resiliency. This paper presents an approach for quantifying the transient behavior resulting from a disaster event in a way that allows researchers to not only describe the transient response but also assess the impact of various factors (both main and interaction effects) on this response. This new approach combines simulation modeling, time series analysis, and statistical outlier detection to differentiate between disaster resistance and disaster recovery. Following the introduction of the approach, the paper provides a preliminary look at its relationship to the existing concept of predicted disaster resilience. © 2012 ISCRAM.