John Sören Pettersson. (2022). Key Concepts for Effective Use of Digital-supported Table-top Crisis Management Exercises. In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 864–875). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: Several researchers and contingency agencies have suggested good practices for crisis management exercises. Resource-constrained practitioners in the field report difficulties finding cost-efficient ways to maintain exercise cycles. This paper draws on experiences from working with professional crisis response coordinators who adapted material for table-top exercises to learning management systems, executed the exercises and evaluated team performance. This paper discusses the elimination of bottlenecks and unexpected benefits arising from more flexible exercise designs in terms of synchrony, continuity, and location. While these concepts capture the essence of the various opportunities for flexibility, they need some supporting features in the design of digital exercises. This paper argues for putting emphasis on the writing/speech dichotomy when analysing exercise designs from the perspective of the entire exercise life cycle, including evaluations and preparations for further exercises. Additionally, how requests for individual answers are planned appears to be an effective instrument for efficient exercise design and evaluation during the conducting of an exercise.
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Christine Owen, Jan Douglas, & Gregory Hickey. (2008). Information flow and teamwork in Incident Control Centers. In B. V. de W. F. Fiedrich (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2008 – 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 742–751). Washington, DC: Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM.
Abstract: This paper reports research in progress into a study of information flow and teamwork in Incident Management Teams (IMTs) in Australia. The research project, funded by the Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre. The overall research design includes interviews with experienced personnel, observations of real-time incidents and training simulations and a national questionnaire of incident management practices. Data reported in this conference session will focus on a sample of observation data conducted in two training simulations of a wildfire incident. Observations were video recorded and key IMT members wore lapel microphones. Video data has been coded for use of artifacts (e.g., maps, status boards) and room movement. Audio data has been coded for by the quantity and quality of interactions within and between IMT functions. The presentation aims to contribute to an understanding of what enables and constrains effective teamwork and information flow within Incident Control Centers (ICCs) in Australia.
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Prithviraj Dasgupta, & Deepak Khazanchi. (2019). A Unified Approach Integrating Human Shared Mental Models with Intelligent Autonomous Team Formation for Crisis Management. In Z. Franco, J. J. González, & J. H. Canós (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response And Management. Valencia, Spain: Iscram.
Abstract: Autonomous systems are being exceedingly used to assist humans in various crisis responses scenarios such as earthquakes and nuclear disasters. Because they operate in highly unstructured and uncertain environments, failures are an inherent part of such autonomous systems, and, techniques for making these systems robust to failures arising from computer hardware, software or communication malfunctions are already integrated into their design. However, an important aspect while designing such systems is often times overlooked: how to better coordinate and communicate across distributed, possibly diverse human teams who are working in cooperation with autonomous systems into the design of the autonomous system itself. Unfortunately, this results in limited adoption of autonomous systems in real-life crisis scenarios. In this working paper, we describe ongoing work that attempts to address this deficit by integrating research on shared mental models between humans with techniques for autonomous agent team formation in the context of search and rescue scenarios.
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Milica Stojmenovic, & Gitte Lindgaard. (2014). Probing PROBE: A field study of an advanced decision support prototype for managing chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives (CBRNE) events. 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. 90–99). University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University.
Abstract: The purpose of this field study was investigate teamwork and communication among event management personnel, to assess the degree to which PROBE, the advanced prototype they were using to manage a CBRNE simulation, would adequately meet their needs. The study was a continuation of previous research conducted in the early phase of PROBE development. Two communication-related analyses were applied to identify instances of effective and of ineffective communication among the management team. These revealed that communication was mostly effective. However, the one serious communication breakdown that was observed could have had fatal consequences. It showed that great care must be taken to ensure the safety of first responders at all times when evaluating prototypes in the field. A list of questions was generated from the lessons learned to assist future researchers prepare for CBRNE field studies.
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