Tom Ritchey. (2006). Modeling multi-hazard disaster reduction strategies with computer-Aided morphological analysis. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 339–346). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Disaster Risk Management (DRM) is a multi-dimensional problem complex requiring knowledge and experience from a wide range of disciplines. It also requires a methodology which can collate and organize this knowledge in an effective, transparent manner. Towards this end, seven specialists from the social, natural and engineering sciences collaborated in a facilitated workshop in order to develop a prototype multi-hazard disaster reduction model. The model, developed with computer-Aided morphological analysis (MA), makes it possible to identify and compare risk reduction strategies, and preparedness and mitigation measures, for different types of hazards. Due to time constraints, the model is neither complete nor accurate-but only represents a proof-of-principle. The workshop was sponsored by the Earthquake Disaster Mitigation Research Center (EDM) in Kobe, in January, 2005.
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Elio Rich. (2006). Modeling risk dynamics in e-operations transitions. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 239–250). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Migrations to new modes of operation are perilous times for most organizations. For firms that routinely work in high-threat, high-reward situations, the risks of innovation are particularly challenging. This paper presents a systems-based approach to understanding these risks, drawing examples from one firm migrating to e-Operations for offshore oil platforms to increase profitability. The firm recently participated in two facilitated group model building exercises to examine the effects of the migration on the organization and resources needed to safely implement multiple changes over time. Based on these exercises, a simulation model of the timing and relative levels of risk, was developed. The results of the workshop and simulation demonstrate the effect of a combined qualitative and quantitative modeling approach to understanding complex problems.
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Tom De Groeve, Luca Vernaccini, & Alessandro Annunziato. (2006). Modelling disaster impact for the global disaster alert and coordination system. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 409–417). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System, jointly developed by the European Commission and the United Nations, combines existing web-based disaster information management systems with the aim to alert the international community in case of major sudden-onset disasters and to facilitate the coordination of international response during the relief phase of the disaster. The disaster alerts are based on automatic hazard information retrieval and real-time running of impact models. This paper describes impact models for earthquakes, tsunamis and tropical cyclones.
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Ignacio Aedo, Daniel Sanz, Paloma Díaz, & Jorge De Castro. (2006). Modelling emergency response communities using RBAC principles. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 426–434). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: One of the main design challenges of any Emergency Management System (EMS) is the diversity of users and responsibilities that must be considered. Modelling the access capabilities of different communities of users is a relevant concern for which the RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) paradigm provides flexible and powerful constructs. In this paper we describe how we used an RBAC meta-model to specify at different levels of abstraction the access policy of a specific EMS called ARCE (Aplicación en Red para Casos de Emergencia). This approach has made it possible to face access modelling at earlier development stages, so that stakeholders got involved in analytical and empirical evaluations to test the correctness and effectiveness of the access policy. Moreover, since the RBAC meta-model is embedded into a web engineering method, we put into practice a holistic process which addresses different design perspectives (structure, navigation, presentation, interaction and access) in an integrated way.
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Shelly Farnham, Elin R. Pedersen, & Robert Kirkpatrick. (2006). Observation of katrina/rita groove deployment: Addressing social and communication challenges of ephemeral groups. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 39–49). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: In order to better understand the challenges specific to the deployment of collaboration technologies in crisis situations, we conducted an informal observational study of the deployment of Groove Virtual Office to various civil and military groups at the heart of the disaster zone over the course of ten days. We summarize both general lessons learned from observations of social and communication challenges in crisis situations that impact technology adoption, and make specific recommendations for improving the deployment process of Groove to enable cross group collaboration. We generally found that dynamic, informal social networks and lightweight ephemeral work groups were essential social structures in the relief effort, and we discuss the need to innovate technologies to support these alternative types of organizations. We encourage that current technology centric innovation for ephemeral workgroups is complemented by a usage centric approach to help address emergent behaviors and opportunities.
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Nong Chen, & Ajantha Dahanayake. (2006). Personalized situation aware information retrieval and access for crisis response. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 214–222). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Crisis response is an information intensive process, which produces or consumes large quantities of information from different relief organizations. Although personalized information retrieval and access has been realized as an efficient means to accelerate information acquisitions, most IT enabled applications in the fields can only provide uniform information to all the involved relief organizations. The traditional centralized design principle dominantly used to address the inter-organizational information accesses over boundaries is no longer feasible due to its lack of flexibility and adaptability to deal with dynamically changing information needs caused by the unpredictable nature of the crises. In this paper we present our ongoing research regarding a plug and play service architecture for personalized, situation aware information retrieval and access services, which offers a new way of thinking about the retrieval of personalized information in the context of crisis response.
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Manuel Llavador, Patricio Letelier, Carmen Penadés, José H. Canós-Cerdá, Marcos R. S. Borges, & Carlos Solís. (2006). Precise yet flexible specification of emergency resolution procedures. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 110–120). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Emergency Managers face a number of critical problems related to the compilation, validation, and use of Emergency Procedures. Traditional approaches do not provide enough expressiveness to accurately specify emergency procedures covering each possible scenario. As a result of this situation, Emergency Procedures are not as useful as they should be, neither in prevention nor during resolution of an emergency. In this work, we present an approach that merges two techniques to provide the broad expressiveness required when specifying Emergency Procedures. To represent sequences on actions performed by different participants we use workflow techniques. On the other hand, we use rules to represent available or mandatory actions according to the state of the system during the emergency. These rules are expressed in dynamic logic as the underlying formalism. Our approach provides more expressiveness and precision for the specification of Emergency Procedures, offering better conditions for their verification and validation. As a case study we have used part of a city subway Emergency Procedure.
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B. Van de Walle, M. T. (2006). Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006-3rd international conference on information systems for crisis response and management. Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: The proceedings contain 74 papers. The topics discussed include: exploring protocols for multidisciplinary disaster response using adaptive workflow simulation; communication and information system for disaster relief operations; SIGAME: web-based system for resources management on emergencies; modeling risk dynamics in e-operations transitions; developing adaptive user interfaces using a game-based simulation environment; availability of technologies versus capabilities of users; foundations for designing global emergency response systems (ERS); VISTA – a visualization analysis tool for humanitarian situational awareness; a theoretical evaluation of information processing resources during organizational crisis; emergency planning as a continuous game; and crisis detection in enterprises based on ahp with clustering.
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Elizabeth Avery Gomez, Katia Passerini, & Karen Hare. (2006). Public health crisis management: Community level roles and communication options. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 435–443). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Crisis management efforts in the United States public health sector aim to prepare and protect the life of an individual, family or group against a health-related event. These efforts span governmental, nongovernmental and private sectors. The need for coordination between these organizations has never been more apparent. A solution will depend heavily on standardized communication protocols using information and communication technology (ICT). Numerous initiatives are currently addressing the needs of our nation with respect to homeland security and public health, yet remain in the early stages for the nongovernmental sector. The emphasis of our research is at the local level where the governmental sector extends to the nongovernmental sector (NGO), particularly community outreach. Our analysis of the local community suggests focusing on the management of communication during public health crises to better understand the complexities and variations presented in these communities. Leveraging experiences from media-technology literature findings and emergency-response efforts, we seek to identify a framework and tools to enable effective communication for those public health practitioners who serve as front-line responders to public health crises. The major contributions of this research will be to extend the use of information systems and mobile technology to the local United States public health communities to increase effective communication between organizations, while providing a state of readiness for homeland security related events.
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Paul S. Earle, & David J. Wald. (2006). Rapid post-earthquake information and assessment tools from the U.S. geological survey national earthquake information center. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 402–408). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: A suite of post-earthquake information products and assessment tools are produced and distributed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC). These products range from the rapid determination of earthquake magnitude and location to tools that provide situational awareness following earthquake catastrophes. The NEIC distributes earthquake location, magnitude, and supporting information through many sources including, text message, pager, and the Internet (e-mail, web-pages and RSS feeds). To aid in the rapid determination of an earthquake's impact, the NEIC has developed tools to 1) map the observed shaking intensity reported from the region affected by the earthquake (Community Internet Intensity Maps), and 2) quantify the number of people exposed to severe shaking (Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response).
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Jouke Rypkema, Guido Te Brake, & Marcel Van Der Lee. (2006). Reachback in crisis management: Lessons learned from the military domain. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 554–558). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Military and crisis management organizations show many similarities. Within the military domain, a study is being done on the use of reachback concepts for the Royal Netherlands Army (RNLA) brigade staff. This paper shows that the results are applicable to the crisis management domain. However, there are differences between the two domains as well. Therefore, the reachback concepts should be tailored to the crisis management domain. The Interactive Collaborative Information Systems (ICIS) game-based simulation platform offers a suitable environment to develop these concepts and test them.
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Laura Montells, Susana Montero, Paloma Díaz, Ignacio Aedo, & Jorge De Castro. (2006). SIGAME: Web-based System for resources management on emergencies. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 1–5). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: This paper describes SIGAME, a web-based application for national cooperation in case of disaster. The main motivation of SIGAME is to provide a quick, flexible, reliable, many-to-many, updated communication channel for improving and coordinating the response of assistance suppliers (located at several territories) when an emergency occurs. In order to make communication as efficient as possible and taking into account the organizational diversities of the suppliers, the political implication and the characteristics of the future users, a user centered design method for web-based interactive systems seems to be the best solution for attending the designer through the different phases and products of the design process. In particular, we will focus on the techniques used both to involve stakeholders in the design and to collect requirements.
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Gabriel Jakobson, Nandan Parameswaran, John Buford, Lundy Lewis, & Pradeep Ray. (2006). Situation-Aware multi-Agent system for disaster relief operations 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. 313–324). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Natural and human-made disasters create unparalleled challenges to Disaster Situation Management (DSM). One of the major weaknesses of the current DSM solutions is the lack of comprehensive understanding of the overall disaster operational situation, and very often making decisions based on a single event. Such weakness is clearly exhibited by the solutions based on the widely used Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) models for building the Muiti-Agent Systems (MAS). In this work we present the adaptation of the AESOP situation management architecture to address the requirements of disaster relief operations. In particular, we extend the existing BDI model with the capability of situation awareness. We describe how the key functions of event collection, situation identification, and situation assessment are implemented in MAS architecture suitable to the characteristics of large-scale disaster recovery. We present the details of a BDI agent in this architecture including a skeleton ontology, and the distributed service architecture of the AESOP platform.
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Aurélien Acquier, Sébastien Gand, & Mathias Szpirglas. (2006). Stake S-holder management and crisis resilience a case study in a public transportation company. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 528–539). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Stakeholder perspectives on crisis management provide a useful descriptive framework for analyzing crises and making crisis narratives. However, their actionability for crisis management, i.e. possibility to use stakeholder management models into operational crisis management processes, remains an under-investigated question. The purpose of this article is to discuss the operational value of stakeholder frameworks for crisis management. Drawing on a qualitative case study of a successful crisis management process in a public transportation company, we investigate the activities set up by the crisis cell to manage internal and external stakeholders during the crisis. In our case, successful stakeholder management relied on: 1) good diagnosis capabilities for the design of an appropriate corporate positioning; 2) an ability to manage coherently a set of emerging and heterogeneous issues involving stakeSholders ; 3) the capacity to set up a tightly coupled form of organization, involving both crisis cell members and various anchorage points, i.e. specific actors involved in the project before the crisis, who were already in contact with key stakeholders as part of their day-to-day activities. We then discuss the practical and theoretical implications of this analysis and the potential value stakeholder perspectives for crisis management.
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Bartel A. Van De Walle, Ronald Spanjers, & Dirk De Wit. (2006). Stakeholder perceptions and standards for information security risks : A case study at a dutch health care organization. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 513–527). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: With the increased use of electronic patient files in Health Care Organizations (HCOs), addressing the risks related to the storage and use of patient information has become increasingly important to avoid intentional or unintentional disclosure, damage to or abuse of patients' personal health records. This has lead governments from various countries to introduce and impose information security standards for HCOs. The Dutch government introduced the NEN 7510 national information security standard; a standard derived from the international ISO 17799 norm. Preceding the implementation phase of NEN 7510 standard at a Dutch HCO, we conducted a field study to identify the information security risks as perceived by the main stakeholder groups in the HCO. We present the differences in the perceived information security risks and threats by end users, management and suppliers, and the degree to which these identified risks will be addressed by the implementation of the NEN 7510 standard.
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Art Botterell. (2006). The common alerting protocol: An open standard for alerting, warning and notification. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 497–503). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: This document describes the OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard, review its history and current status, and propose some directions for its future application and development. This XML content standard specifies a canonical data model for alerting, warning and notification messages. By abstracting the essential elements of effective warning messages from the underlying delivery technologies, CAP simplifies the integration of diverse warning delivery systems and provides a simple template for the creation of alerts and warnings. CAP is being used in a variety of warning systems and applications, but its full potential has yet to be exploited.
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Max Wyss. (2006). The kashmir M7.6 shock of 8 october 2005 calibrates estimates of losses in future himalayan earthquakes. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 397–401). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: In an article published in March 2005, we estimated the number of fatalities to be expected in future large earthquakes in the Himalaya (Wyss, 2005). For the scenario called Kashmir, we estimated that 67,000 to 137,000 fatalities should be expected. The M7.6 Kashmir earthquake of 8 October 2005 caused approximately 85,000 fatalities. Thus, one may argue that we forecast this disaster well. However, we assumed M8.1, a depth of 25 km and an epicenter located about 200 km to the SE from the October epicenter. Using the moment tensor solution for the October earthquake with a depth of 12 km for the energy release, we estimate the number of fatalities between 29,000 and 56,000. Thus, a factor of 2 must be applied to obtain the observed number, and the depth of the energy release in the scenario earthquakes should be placed at 12 km, which results in on over-All correction factor of 2.4. Therefore, we correct our estimates for numbers of fatalities in future Himalayan earthquake to range from 100,000 to 500,000, as specified for the locations given in Table 2.
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Valeriy Klenov. (2006). The moving digital earth (MDE) for monitoring of forthcoming disasters. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 17–23). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Disasters in Earth Nature Systems (in river basins and in coastal zone) are generated the systems by influence under pressure and impacts of external systems. The water related disasters include the most of hazardous processes on land and sea as follows: floods, avalanches, droughts, landslides, debris-flows, erosion, abrasion, and others. The external systems are not yet able to let know about the Time, Place, and Power of future disasters all together. However, Earth systems allow doing it because of their property to delay on exterior power. The proposed and discussed is the Moving Digital Earth (MDE) technology for outstripping estimation of the Earth Nature Systems response on exterior pressure and impacts. The MDE uses only the knowledge of current System's state and methods of the Digital Systems Analysis (DSA) by high-speed computing.
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Haibin Zhu, & MengChu Zhou. (2006). The role transferability in emergency management systems. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 487–496). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Role Transferability is a basic requirement for emergency management systems. Role specification, relationship expression, and transfer regulations are critical elements of this requirement. This paper discusses the role transferability requirement for emergency management systems; emphasizes that role specification is an underlying mechanism for role transfer; proposes a revised E-CARGO (Environment-Class, Agent, Role, Group, Object) model for role transfer in a group; and presents an algorithm to validate role transfer while maintaining group viability.
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Paul Klapwijk, & Leon J.M. Rothkrantz. (2006). Topology based infrastructure for crisis situations. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 504–512). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Recent terrorist attacks and natural disasters have forced humanity to respond to crisis situations effectively as possible. In these situations especially the first hours rescue workers cannot always rely on existing communication infrastructure. Knowledge about the situation is to be gathered to obtain an aggregate world model of the situation. Decisions can be taken based on this world model. The solution we propose consists of using a Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET), in which the nodes are organized in a topology in order to facilitate the necessary functionalities. Communication between the nodes takes place via a distributed blackboard structure. This architecture supports services developed with the purpose of assisting rescue workers. The agents (humans/sensors) in the network provide data as input to the network. Our approach takes care of processing of this input data to provide users with appropriate information and to obtain a shared world model. As a proof of concept we implemented a prototype of our approach on a number of mobile devices and tested the idea in real life.
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Stephen Potter, Austin Tate, & Gerhard Wickler. (2006). Using I-X process panels as intelligent to-do lists for agent coordination in emergency response. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 272–281). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to describe the I-X system with its principal user interface, the I-X Process Panel, its underlying ontology, , and how this panel can be used as an intelligent to-do list that assists emergency responders in applying pre-defined standard operating procedures in different types of emergencies. In particular, multiple instances of I-X Process Panels can be used as a distributed system to coordinate the efforts of independent emergency responders as well as responders within the same organization. Furthermore, it can be used as an agent wrapper for other software systems such as web services to integrate these into the emergency response team as virtual members. The heart of the I-X system is an automated planner that can be used to synthesize courses of action or explore alternative options manually.
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Arthur H. Hendela, Xiang Yao, Murray Turoff, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, & Michael J. Chumer. (2006). Virtual emergency preparedness gaming: A follow-up study. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 450–459). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Planning processes, including simulations and games, can help emergency workers to prepare for the unexpected. Rehearsal using software based gaming techniques not only helps planning, but is also cost effective. Computer-based groupware systems can make experts available regardless of location. A new approach, Virtual Simulation (VS), uses networking to create a flexible learning and planning environment. To date two prototype trials of this approach have been implemented at NJIT with major revamps between each one. This paper gives the results of the latest prototype trial, a simulation of attacks on university computer centers. The insights from this second prototype trial of virtual simulation will help us to improve the design and approach for future offerings.
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Dennis J. King. (2006). VISTA-a visualization analysis tool for humanitarian situational awareness. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 11–16). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: The US Department of State's Humanitarian Information Unit (HIU) is developing a new product and web-based visualization analysis tool, known as VISTA (Visualized Information & Synthesized Temporal Analysis). VISTA displays geo-spatial, temporal, numerical/graphic data and textual information, all in one product or via a web interface. VISTA is primarily intended for use by decision-makers, analysts, desk/project officers, and others to provide up-to-date common operating picture ie a vista about an emergency, issue or project.
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Murray Turoff, & Bartel A. Van De Walle. (2006). Welcome message from the ISCRAM2006 conference and program chairs. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (-). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
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Simon French, Emma Carter, & Carmen Niculae. (2006). When experts or models disagree. In M. T. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2006 – 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 547–553). Newark, NJ: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: In managing crises, decision makers are confronted with a plethora of uncertainties. Many arise because the world is uncertain, particularly in the context of a crisis. But some arise because analyses based upon different, but seemingly equivalent models lead to different forecasts. Other times expert advisors differ in their explanations and predictions of the evolving situation. We argue that when handled correctly such conflict can alert the decision makers to the inherent complexity and uncertainty of the situation and improve their management of the crisis.
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