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Special
Sessions
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title to see full session description
- Audit
Activities and Functions in Emergency Preparedness and Management,
B. Elisabeth Rossen, brossen@fau.edu
- Communication
Challenges in Emergency Response, B.S. Manoj, bsmanoj@ucsd.edu
- Communities
in Emergency Management, Wendy Schafer, was15@psu.edu
- Comparing
Military and Civil Information Systems for Emergency Preparedness
and Response, Tim Grant, TJ.Grant@mindef.nl
- Creating
and Using the Window of Opportunity, Rene Windhouwer, rene@windhouwer.demon.nl
- Emergency
Response Reachback:
Cases, Concepts, Processes, and Tools, Steven R. Haynes, shaynes@ist.psu.edu
- Exploring
Knowledge Management in Crisis Response, Murray E. Jennex, mjennex@mail.sdsu.edu
- Human
factors aspects in multi-agency crisis management,
Liz Carver, liz.carver@baesystems.com
- Incident
Command Systems Workflow Management, Allen Milewski, amilewsk@monmouth.edu
- Information,
Communication, and Coordination Issues from Hurricane Katrina,
John R. Harrald, jharrald@gwu.edu
- Mobile
and Multi Channel Emergency Announcements (MEA/MCEA) Systems,
Ronja Addams-Moring ronja.addams-moring@tkk.fi
- Modeling and Computer Simulation of Disaster Plans and Emergency
Response, Maria Santos, masantos@lnec.pt
- Multi-agent
Systems for Disaster Management and Response, Frank
Fiedrich, fiedrich@gwu.edu
- Multi-Disciplinary
Requirements Capture for Emergency Management Systems,
Paul Burghardt, Paul.Burghardt@DECIS.nl
- Personal
Area Networks (PAN) for Emergency Response, Susan McGrath, Susan.P.McGrath@dartmouth.edu
- Public
Warning, Information and Engagement, Art Botterell, acb@incident.com
- Real-time
Alerts for Earthquakes and Tsunami, Max Wyss, wapmerr@maxwyss.com
- Research
Methods in Crisis Decision Making and Support, David
Mendonηa, mendonca@njit.edu
- Stakeholder
coordination for crisis management, Julie Dugdale, dugdale@irit.fr
- Standards
in Emergency Management Systems, Jane Fedorowicz, jfedorowicz@bentley.edu
- System
Dynamics Modeling for Emergency Response and Management,
Peter Otto, po36@cornell.edu
- Visualization
in Emergency Management, Erika Darling, edarling@mitre.org
Full
Session Descriptions
Audit
Activities and Functions in Emergency Preparedness (back
to list)
Chair: Elisabeth Rossen, brossen@fau.edu,
Executive Forensic Accounting Program, Florida Atlantic University
Co-Chair: Michael Alles, alles@business.rutgers.edu
Donald Warren, jdonwarren@rbs.rutgers.edu
Accounting and Information Systems, Rutgers Business School
Rutgers University
This session addresses: how do auditors approach the daunting task of assuring
the preparedness and use of information systems in any or all phases of the Lifecycle
of Emergency Preparedness and Response (planning,
training, mitigation, detection, alerting, response, recovery and assessment).
Topics of Particular Interest for Papers:
- Defining Auditor
s Role in Emergency Preparedness
- Risk Assessment by Auditor
s for Emergency Preparedness
- Internal Controls by Auditor
s for Emergency Preparedness
- Opportunities for Auditors in All Phases of Emergency
Preparedness
- Action Learning for
Auditors
in Optimizing the Use of IS in Emergency Preparedness
- Improved planning, risk
analysis, damage assessment, and recovery analysis
- Tracking and assessing
organizational decision processes
- Future Research Programs
to Enhance Auditors
Role in Emergency Preparedness
Practitioners
cases; Learning Community Reports; Research in Progress, Conceptual Papers and
Completed Papers are invited for submission. Authors are welcome to contact
the session chairs early on with questions and for feedback on abstracts.
Communication
Challenges in Emergency Response (back
to list)
Chair: B. S. Manoj, bsmanoj@ucsd.edu
Co-Chair: Alexandra Hubenko Baker ahubenko@ucsd.edu
UCSD Calit2
University of California
www.itr-rescue.org and www.responsphere.org
Session Steering Committee:
Prof. Ramesh Rao, University of California San Diego, USA
Prof. Sharad Mehrotra, University of California Irvine, USA
Prof. Bhaskar Rao, University of California San Diego, USA
Prof. Nalini Venkatasubramanian, University of California Irvine, USA
Prof. Carter Butts, University of California Irvine, USA
In every emergency situation, the response actions are aggravated by a chaotic
communication scenario. There are two critical elements to this communication
chaos. The first is the human communication behavior in emergency scenario;
the second is the design of the communication networks that are generally
designed for peace time traffic. It has become imperative to study
the behavior of people and networks as far as communication scenarios in
an emergency situation are concerned. The focus theme of this special
session is the communication challenges in emergency response. In this
session, we focus on two major areas: Social communication issues and Communication
Technology Issues. These two are so inter-related that we cannot separate
them from any realistic study. For example; any real world emergency
could lead to a network emergency or, in other words, the failure of communication
networks could lead to real world emergencies.
This special session focuses on needs and challenges faced by communication
systems during emergency response activities and the social issues surrounding
it. Research areas of particular interest are (a) social communication
issues on before, during, and after a crisis, (b) communication network issues
during and after a crisis, and (c) the influence of (a) on (b). Monitoring
the communication pattern can help developing an early warning system about
impending crisis. We invite researchers, practitioners, students,
and academicians to submit their high quality research papers to this special
session. This special session accepts papers on the topics including
but not limited to the following topics.
- Human communication behavior
modeling in emergency situations
- Identification of human
behavior patterns for early detection of network emergencies
- Group communication challenges
in inter-response agency communications
- Technological challenges
in inter-response agency communication
- Effect on human communication
during crises on communication networks
- Emergency networking
- Use of IT in emergency communication
- Ad hoc wireless networking
- Wireless mesh networking
- Extreme networking for ground
zero communication
- Heterogeneous wireless networks
for emergency response
- Location detection, traffic
prediction, and their impact on communication infrastructure
- Reliability and fault tolerance
of communication infrastructure
- Manageability of cellular
infrastructure on the aftermath of large scale disasters
- Design of wireless networks
for emergency handling
- Fault tolerance
and recovery in wireless systems
- Intelligent wireless messaging
system for aiding crises handling
- Automated crises management
systems for next generation wireless networks
- Studies on the impact of
crises or emergency situations to wireless network crises
- Data gathering, analysis,
and utilization of information to aid crises mitigation
in next generation wireless networks
- Design of distributed wireless
network control centers for aiding emergency situation
handling
- Simulation test-bed and
related studies for crises mitigation
- Experimental results on
solutions for wireless network centric crises mitigation
- Human communication behavior
modeling to prevent impending wireless network emergencies
- Protocol design for implicit
emergency response in next generation wireless networks
Communities
in Emergency Management (back
to list)
Chair: Wendy Schafer, was15@psu.edu
Pennsylvania State University
Co-chair: John Carroll, jcarroll@ist.psu.edu
Edward M. Frymoyer
Professor Penn State University
http://cscl.ist.psu.edu/public/users/jcarroll/Self/index.html
Emergency management activities can be perceived in a number of different ways. An
especially robust viewpoint is that emergency management is a community-based
activity. In this view, all phases of the emergency management cycle, planning,
preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation, might involve a significant
community effort. Emergency situations, including potential and actual
situations, are addressed through a coalescence of ideas, manpower, and physical
resources.
Emergencies are known to strike geographic areas and the local first responders
are always on the front lines. These firemen, police officers, hazardous
material experts, emergency medical services technicians, and so on belong
to the local geographic community and they belong to an emergency management
community. As part of the civic sector, they participate in a local
squad, team, company or a district. They are part of an organization
providing fire protection, police services, emergency medicine, etc. On
another level, they work with emergency management coordinators, local schools,
transportation centers, and charitable agencies to handle wide-area events. Working
in a multi-agency context, these people come together to form an emergency
management community focused on a coordination of efforts.
The purpose of this session is to explore the idea of emergency management
as a community activity, discuss the implications for technology design,
and reflect on technological innovations that support community-based interactions. The
concept of community is broadly defined and includes geographic communities,
single agency communities, multi-agency communities, communities of emergency
managers, and online communities. Submissions are invited that address
the community aspects of emergency management work, including but not limited
to the following topics:
- Theoretical perspectives
on geographic communities and emergency management
- Theoretical perspectives
on emergency management communities
- Case studies of community-based
practices
- Technologies that facilitate
emergency management communities
- Organizational designs and
activities that foster emergency management communities
- Communication and collaboration
resources for emergency management communities
- Emergency notification and
awareness designs for geographic communities
- Theoretical perspectives
on volunteers and volunteer organizations
- Case studies of volunteers
and volunteer organizations
Comparing
Military and Civil Information Systems for Emergency Preparedness
and Response (back
to list)
Chair: Tim Grant TJ.Grant@mindef.nl
Professor Operational ICT & Communications
Netherlands Defense Academy (NLDA)
Information systems (ISs) for emergency preparedness and response are found
in both civil and military fields. In the past, the civil and military
IS communities have been largely isolated from one another.
There are now several compelling reasons why civil and military ISs for preparedness
and response should be compared with one another. A scientific reason
is that comparison will almost certainly demonstrate that despite
different terminologies and operating philosophies many
of the underlying concepts, processes, architectures, and technologies have
much in common. Discovering such commonalities increases the sum of
scientific knowledge. An operational reason is that preparedness and
response to civil emergencies may well require close collaboration with the
military, as on September 11, 2001, and more recently with Hurricanes Katrina
and Rita. The reverse is also true, as when military humanitarian and
nation-building operations require military ISs to monitor and control civil
assets like electricity, water, telecommunications, and petrochemical installations
and networks. A commercial reason is that the development of COTS products
that can serve both civil and military IS needs increases the size of the
market, spreads cost and risk, increases product reliability, and enhances
interoperability between users.
The special session solicits submissions that compare, contrast, and cross-benchmark
civil and military ISs, that proposes a model or methodology for comparison,
or that describes a civil or military IS so as to facilitate comparison and
benchmarking. Submissions may address the complete lifecycle of emergency
preparedness and response or part of that lifecycle. Example submissions
include (but are not limited to):
- Full papers presenting common concepts,
processes, and architectures or comparison models or methodologies;
- Reports on research in progress on
common concepts, processes, and architectures or comparison models
or methodologies;
- Practitioner cases on comparing or
interoperating civil and military ISs.
Creating
and Using the Window of Opportunity (back
to list)
Chair: Rene Windhouwer, rene@windhouwer.demon.nl
The conference theme of the ISCRAM 2006 is the continuous parallel between
preparedness and response. Most of de IS are primary designed for the response
phase (situational awareness, DSS, etc.), but they can also be of great help
in the preparedness and mitigation phases.
A very good example is that some hazards have a certain warning time, this
means that there a timeframe between the alarm and the disaster. In the recent
history we have seen that emergency managers were not aware of the fact that
there is a certain warning time (window of opportunity) or did not use it
properly. A recent example is the hurricane Katrina where the city of New
Orleans did not evacuate those who rely upon the government or gave them
shelter in a stadium that was prepared for this task.
Another example is that simulations can give us information of how the disaster
will develop in time. Inundation simulations of parts of the Province of
Zeeland shown that a major evacuation routes was flooded within Five hours
after the dike burst. This led to the conclusion that an evacuation has to
be preventive. Evacuations themselves are a major challenge for effective
use of windows of opportunity.
Both examples show that it is very important to asses the hazards in de preparedness
phase. But what methodologies can be used for assessing the risks and how
could those risks be mapped. What role could those maps play in the risk
and crisis communication?
The special paper session seeks to explore the following questions:
- Which methodologies can we use
to asses the (multi)risk in a certain area?
- Can those methodologies create a certain
warning that can be used in the response phase to reduce the risk and consequences
of the disaster?
- How could the risks be mapped and what role
can the maps play in the risk and crisis communication, training and exercising
of the emergency managers?
- What role can Decision Support Systems play
by using the window of opportunity
Emergency
Response Reachback: Cases, Concepts, Processes,
and Tools (back
to list)
Chair: Steven R. Haynes, shaynes@ist.psu,edu, Assistant
Professor
John M. Carroll, jcarroll@ist.psu,edu, Edward
M. Frymoyer Chair
Steve Sawyer, sawyer@ist.psu,edu,
Associate Professor
School of Information Sciences & Technology, Penn State University
Reachback refers to knowledge-intensive processes and tools that make
available to emergency response personnel in the field the full range and
depth of an organizations
knowledge assets. For example, a firefighter on-scene at a fire may
want to call on the knowledge of all other firefighters at their station,
who in turn might need to reach back to subject matter experts (e.g., for
hazardous materials) at other stations in the city, or to other state or
federal organizations. This session will explore theories, models,
techniques, and tools to inform development of a reachback science for emergency
management and crisis response.
Reachback is a type of knowledge management particularly concerned with how distributed
assets can be leveraged in response to a critical information need. Emergency
responders reachback to
obtain the information they need to make time-critical and potentially consequential
decisions as events unfold during crisis response. Reachback is especially
important when emergencies involve hazardous materials, weapons of mass destruction,
and other situations that require in-depth, time-sensitive, and specialist knowledge
to manage effectively. The reachback domain presents opportunities to develop
and leverage synergies between information and communications technologies and
distributed organizations.
A number of tools and underlying technologies are used to support reachback. These
range from standard helpdesk and technical support systems to expertise locators
and advanced knowledge mapping representations. Other relevant technologies
include but are not limited to: computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), information
retrieval and collaborative filtering, geographical information systems (GIS),
expert systems and intelligent agents, knowledge representation, knowledge tailoring,
among many others.
This session is concerned with helping to define and delineate the reachback
field. Submissions are invited that address issues informing the reachback
domain including but not limited to the following topics:
- Theoretical perspectives informing
reachback practices and technology design for emergency management
- Technologies to facilitate effective
reachback in emergency response organizations
- Knowledge mapping for emergency planning
and response: concepts, techniques, and tools
- Expertise location in crisis situations
- Empirical studies of emergency management
reachback technology and process
- Case studies in reachback
- Design of emergency management organizations
to facilitate effective reachback
- Information tailoring in crisis situations
- Large-scale reachback models and tools
for crisis events of national significance
Exploring
Knowledge Management in Crisis Response (back
to list)
Chair: Murray E. Jennex,
Ph.D., P.E., CISSP, mjennex@mail.sdsu.edu
San Diego State University, Editor in Chief, International Journal of Knowledge
Management
There is much discussion on using knowledge in crisis response decision support. This
session defines crisis knowledge as experience from previous responses to
crisis with subsequent analysis as to the effectiveness and appropriateness
of those responses. This session will solicit papers that explore the
use of Knowledge Management techniques to manage this knowledge and bring
it to bear during crisis response to aid decision makers in determining appropriate
courses of action. Some expected topics include incorporating KM into
crisis response DSS, determining when knowledge is appropriate for a situation,
visualizing knowledge, storage of knowledge for search and retrieval, and
cases describing experience in incorporating KM into crisis response. Quality
papers from this session(s) would be fast tracked for publication in the
International Journal of Knowledge Management.
Human
Factors Aspects in Multi-Agency Crisis Management (back
to list)
Chair: Elizabeth Carver, liz.carver@baesystems.com
Executive Scientist, Advanced Technology Centre
BAE Systems, Bristol, UK
It is acknowledged that technological advances have made a great impact in
areas such as IT infrastructure, data sharing capabilities, and the development
of tools for data analysis and decision making support in crisis management
scenarios. However, in some cases the planned benefits do not seem
as great as was originally predicted. Often the people-centered aspects
are not sufficiently addressed to allow the people and technologies to work
together and with each other, with the people forming an integral part of
the system. It is only by doing this that the whole system can reap
the potentially great benefits. There is a requirement to better understand
the more people-centered aspects that affect the collaboration of different
organizations to achieve successful outcomes in crisis and emergency situations.
The top level goal for human centered information systems is to ensure
that the right information, in an understandable format gets to the person
who needs to know it and who can recognize
its value, in time for the right action to be taken.
This session will aim to better understand the social, organizational, and
cognitive aspects of crisis and emergency management and to identify the
barriers and enablers with respect to technology, process, and people.
Papers are welcomed on:
- Experiences in getting different agencies
to talk to each other, as well as the operational difficulties encountered
- Collaboration and shared
understanding within and between crisis management teams.
- Cultural differences between groups
which have an impact on understanding
- Situation awareness at both ground level
and at command level
- Shared awareness of the situation by relevant
stakeholders
- Collaborative planning
- Social network analysis in crisis scenarios
- Taxonomies of information types
- Visualization of information for greater
understanding by users including
display design de-cluttering, filtering, information extraction
- Information overload
- Use of technologies to enhance
communication and/or transfer of information from HQ to people at the
coal face (what
needs to be transferred )
- Transferring intent from Gold command
- Human factors aspects of communication
in heterogeneous environments
- Case studies of HF evaluation trials
in real or experimental environments
- User requirements capture
- Decision support
- Awareness of the public about what is
happening
- Responses of the public to warnings
- Impacts of media (TV, internet)
- Impacts of mobile phones
- Lessons learned, use cases, current
available knowledge bases and current experience
- Practical guidance for storing
information in databases of experience as well as success in re-using
it
- Cross domain training
and learning
- Definition of human-centered requirements
for training, as well as for support and analysis tools
We need to work towards a level playing field taking into account differences
in crisis domain, national differences, cognizance of the lowest common denominator,
and potential difficulties in cross border collaboration in order to build
better crisis and response management systems.
Incident
Command Systems Workflow Management (back
to list)
Chair: Allen Milewski, amilewsk@monmouth.edu
Co-chair: Jiacun Wang, jwang@monmouth.edu
Department of Software Engineering
Center for Rapid Response Database Systems
Monmouth University, NJ
The research on workflow modeling and validation has been around
for a couple of decades, and many approaches and tools have
been developed and
gained certain range of practical applications. However, most workflows
do not allow one to modify a process model (e.g. to react to external events)
once it has started executing. On the other hand, the
increased dynamic nature of business rules in todays
market have drawn more and more attention from the research
society. This
flexibility becomes of paramount importance in applications such as an
incident command systems (ICS), which is designed to respond to terror
attacks or natural disasters. An ICS would have to deal with frequent changes
in the course of actions dictated by incoming events, a predominantly volunteer-based
workforce, the need to integrate various software tools and organizations,
and a highly distributed workflow management. The need of making
ad-hoc changes also calls for an on-the-fly verification of the correctness
of the modified workflow. The fact that main users of
ICS will be volunteers from various backgrounds also raises
a demand for tools
with
highly intuitive features for the description and modification
of the workflows.
As workflow systems currently provide little support for such
challenges, the goal of this special session is to provide
researchers with an
opportunity to discuss how workflow systems can better deal
with these issues. We
expect to draw together and help identify the breadth of current work,
commonalities, gaps, potential collaborations, and future research directions
for workflow specifically as it relates to ICS at the application level. Relevant
topics include but are not limit to:
- Dynamic workflow modeling and verification
- Infrastructures for dynamically modifiable
process models
- Inter-organizational dynamic workflows
- Formal methods in dynamic workflows
- Methodologies for ICS workflow management
- Tool development and integration
- Notification and alerting of external
events
- Automatic event-driven workflow modification
- ICS workflow case study
- ICS process patterns
- ICS process visualization
- ICS process simulation
- Usability design and evaluation
All submissions must indicate that they are targeted to the Incident
Command Systems Workflow Management session
and be emailed to iscram06@njit.edu.
Information,
Communication, and Coordination Issues from Hurricane Katrina (back
to list)
Chair: John R. Harrald, jharrald@gwu.edu
Director, George Washington Institute for Crisis Disaster and Risk Management
Information management problems and the failure of critical communication
infrastructure crippled the early response efforts to Hurricane
Katrina resulting in increased human suffering and economic loss. The objective of this
session is to describe the most significant of these issues, identify the
factors that caused the failures, and identify the impacts on organizational
decision making and performance. Papers are solicited that describe
technological issues (e.g. the total collapse of emergency communications),
information management issues (e.g. the handling of information within and
transferring information between EOCs), and the use of technology in organizational
and individual decision support. Papers on information, Coordination,
and Communication issues in any of the recent Hurricanes in 2005 will be
considered as well, especially where they identify reoccurring issues across
the different events. Papers based on empirical observation are particularly
encouraged. The session will be chaired by Dr. John R. Harrald
who is a member of the National Research Councils
Committee on Using Information Technology to Enhance Disaster Management.
Mobile
and Multi-Channel Emergency Announcement (MEA/MCEA) Systems (back
to list)
Chair: Ronja Addams-Moring, ronja.addams-moring@tkk.fi
http://www.tml.tkk.fi/~ronja/
In concordance with the international Information Systems for Crisis Response
and Management (ISCRAM) community's conference theme of information systems
for the Lifecycle
of Emergency Preparedness and Response (Planning,
Training, Mitigation, Detection, Alerting, Response, Recovery, and Assessment),
we issue a call for papers concerning mobile emergency announcements (MEA)
systems, and the related multi-channel emergency announcements (MCEA) systems.
In any civil defense situation, such as a fire at a shopping centre,
a multiple-car pileup on a freeway in foggy weather, the aftermath
of a severe storm or
the preparations before a radioactive fallout cloud arrives, the
general public needs to know what they should and should not do. Therefore,
the authorities need reliable systems for sending emergency announcements
(EA) (also called public
warning)
to the affected population. Additionally, an EA that gets corrupted
during sending may cause fatal misunderstandings and thus do great harm. So
sufficient reliability under abnormal conditions is one central requirement
when we choose, which technology or technologies to use for sending emergency
announcements. This special session addresses these challenges.
The concepts MEA and MCEA refer to emergency announcements that are
- sent by an authority or a representative
for many authorities,
- to the general public (or a subgroup
thereof),
- who are in an afflicted or threatened
area;
- in case
of a MEA, using different types of mobile devices
that people routinely carry with them (mobile
phones, PDA's, laptops connected to
WLAN's in Internet cafιs,
etc.);
- in case of a MCEA, using multiple
channels, often including a MEA channel.
The MEA/MCEA content can be, for example: early warning,
incident information, and evacuation route description or
protection guidance. Although
a MEA/MCEA system or system part is usually designed for a certain
geographic, language or cultural area, many features of these systems
are also generalizable.
The research issues of interest include, for example:
- usable technologies for MEA systems (use
case or usability evaluations)
- integrating new MEA systems with the existing
EA systems (how to create reliable MCEA systems)
- solutions to the challenges of locating
and identifying survivors (including reconciling different legal frameworks
for safety and privacy issues)
- how to provide efficient feedback channels
for survivors when networks are congested, damaged or both
- rapid re-establishing of mobile communications
networks during or directly after an emergency (to e.g. facilitate MEAs)
- challenges concerning the understandability
of MEA and MCEA content (especially in multi-lingual environments)
- end user acceptance of MEAs and MCEAs
- coordinating MEAs or MCEAs from different
authorities, and
- MEA and MCEA related security issues, especially
how to prevent false or faked emergency announcements.
Modeling
and Computer Simulation of Disaster Plans and Emergency Response (back
to list)
Chair: Maria A. Santos, masantos@lnec.pt
http://www.dha.lnec.pt/nti/english/staff/masantos.html
National Civil Engineering Laboratory, Hydraulics Department Lisbon, Portugal
Natural or man-induced hazards as floods, landslides, volcanoes,
tsunamis or dam breaks, may have severe consequences and may extend
for large
areas. To
cope with such a disaster that involves a large number of stakeholders requires
a holistic approach and an efficient management, which is highly dependent on
the timely access to relevant information, on adequate planning and on the response
of the main stakeholders. This efficient response calls for adequate
participation, coordinated interactions and some improvisation of the
various players that can
only be obtained through training.
Since most of the more catastrophic disasters are of low frequency, training
based on field experience is not possible. Testing a disaster
plan, with the evaluation of the available means and the pre-definition
of procedures
or
the preparedness of the defense personnel, is possible only through
computational simulation where disaster scenarios can be created and
actors roles
can be associated with individual agents in simulation.
An emergency response simulation with the required functionalities is a cost-effective
means of scenario creation and of personnel training. It allows
creating scenarios of destruction, triggering alerts and simulating
a dynamic coordination
of a multi-disciplinary community, saving lives and protecting property.
Several information systems and agent-based simulation applications in emergency
management have been developed in recent years. Other ICT tools,
such as 3-D visualization, social network representation, location-based
systems,
geographic
information systems, information lens techniques, may contribute to
improve the simulation of dynamic spatial phenomena.
Papers to be submitted must focus on emergency response modeling
and computer simulation and personnel training. Case studies are welcome. Topics
to be addressed may include:
- agent-based
simulation and other knowledge-based methods;
- theory
of modeling and simulation applied to emergency response;
- synthetic
environments;
- collaborative
work;
- decision
analysis;
- Game-based
frameworks for emergency response simulation.
Multiagent
Systems for Disaster Management and Response (back
to list)
Chair: Dr. Frank Fiedrich, fiedrich@gwu.edu
Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management, the George Washington
University
http://www.gwu.edu/~icdrm/People/fiedrich.htm
Co-chair: Drs. Paul Burghardt, paul.burghardt@decis.nl
Decis Lab, Delft, The Netherlands
http://www.decis.nl/html/paul_burghardt.htm
Multiagent Systems (MAS) are computational systems where software
agents (e.g. independent software programs) cooperate or compete
with each other
to achieve an individual or collective task. These systems are currently
receiving increasing attention in diverse applications for complex and dynamic
environments. The management of and the response to natural
and technological disasters is an emergent research area and the
complexity
of these devastating
events suggests the use of such adaptive realtime technologies.
This special session will focus on the potential of agent technology
for disaster management and response. The session will address
the following questions:
- What is
the potential of MAS for emergency and disaster management
and what are the IS requirements for the use
of agent technology at various domain levels?
- What kind
of architectures, frameworks and models do support
this approach?
- Which
formal models can be used for agent-based real-time
planning and automatic information retrieval?
- How can
agent-based simulation systems be used to simulate
the consequences of response activities and how
can the results be validated?
- How can
agents be linked to human decision makers in order
to be accepted?
Although the main focus of this session explores the potential of MAS, the
session also welcomes contributions focusing on potential problems and risks
associated with the use of this technology.
We seek original and high-quality contributions on the general
theme of Multiagent Systems for Disaster Management and Response. The
following is a non-exhaustive list with topics of special interest:
- Unique frameworks and architectures for
agent-based decision support systems for natural and man-made disasters
- Models for agent-based real-time operations
planning and resource allocation
- Dynamic goal and plan creation with uncertain
and conflicting information
- Co-ordination, communication and collaborative
planning in large-scale multiagent systems
- Information retrieval agents for disaster
related real time information systems
- Agent-based modeling of self organizing
systems and emergent organizations for disaster response
- Security issues in agent-based systems for
time critical missions
- Human-Agent interfaces
- Ontologies and communication standards
- Agent-based simulation systems
Multi-Disciplinary
Requirements Capture for ISCRAM (back
to list)
Chair: Paul Burghardt,
Paul.Burghardt@DECIS.nl
Research Manager at Delft Consortium on Intelligent Systems, Netherlands
The purpose of this session is to present efficient and effective ways to
capture requirements in research and development projects that have limited
resources to do so.
Many R&D projects in the field of information systems for crisis response
and management are confronted with the need to capture requirements. The
initial proposal-time vision on the crisis management and response organizations
for which the information technology will be developed is often not specific
enough. The need arises to acquire in depth knowledge of the domain
and to refine the requirements. This work is often complicated by the
fact that multiple stakeholders must be considered while the project resources
to do so are very limited. Such technology oriented projects
could greatly benefit from efficient and yet effective methods
to capture requirements
that meet real world demands.
Some non-exhaustive examples of topics that could contribute to this session
are:
- Techniques for the analysis of reports
on past crises cases
- Using qualitative research techniques
to capture requirements
- Using computer simulation to discover
requirements
- Facilitating requirements capture by
means of group decisions support systems
- Encouraging knowledge sharing with regard
to requirements by using collaborative (web based) software
- Comparing crisis application with other
kinds of (military) systems to discover and sharpen requirements
- Using crisis scenarios to drive requirements
capture
- Learning requirements by performing
large scale (training) exercises on the policy and operational field
work levels.
This session invites practitioners, developers and researchers to provide:
- Case studies
describing how an R&D project
(in progress) are dealing with requirements
capture (2500 words);
- Case studies on how requirements were
captured in actual projects, with methodological explanation, justification
and evaluation (Full paper, 5000 words)
- Methodological
proposals on ISCRAM requirements capture featuring
a specific
approach
(See above examples) (full
paper, 5000 words)
Authors are encouraged to submit examples of innovative multi-disciplinary
approaches where methods from the social and management sciences have been
merged with systems and software engineering processes.
Personal
Area Networks (PAN) for Emergency Response (back
to list)
Chair: Susan McGrath, Susan.P.McGrath@dartmouth.edu
Director, Emergency Readiness
and Response Research Center,
Associate Professor of Engineering
Dartmouth College
The threat of terrorist attacks and large-scale natural disasters illustrate
the escalating potential for exposure to high-risk environments for
both emergency responders and casualties. Thus the ability to monitor, track, and assess
the state of responders and casualties have become an increasingly important
aspect of homeland security research. Advances in sensor and networking
technologies can facilitate the development of real-time monitoring and assessment
networks, called Personal Area Networks (PANs). Papers related to the creation
and use of PANs for emergency response will be presented in this session. Topics
to be discussed include:
- Integration and impact of sensors for
physiological and environmental monitoring
- GPS , motes and other responder tracking
network applications
- Wireless
networks applications for PANs
- Application of small and embedded processing
devices for responder and casualty systems
- System level use of PAN data, including
resource planning and allocation
- Applications for PAN information visualization
Public
Warning, Information, and Engagement (back
to list)
Chair: Art Botterell, acb@incident.com
Papers are invited that deal with any aspect of the design, development,
deployment, operation, or evaluation of information systems for
public warning, emergency public information and public collaborative
media
in emergencies. Authors
should focus on citizen
situational awareness,
input and approval of warning messages, coordination of multiple warning
systems, warning to non-English speaking populations and to people with sensory
disabilities, follow-on emergency public information, and participatory media.
We are particularly interested in new and challenging approaches to support for
alerting, informing, and reassuring the public, and for allowing the public to
assist in meeting their own information needs.
Indicative topics of interest are:
- Public warning systems
- Public reporting and did
you feel it? systems
- Blogs, Wikis and wireless messaging in
emergencies
- Community awareness systems
- Common Alerting Protocol
- Warning system controls
- Sensors and real-time metrics
Real-Time
Alerts for Earthquakes and Tsunami (back
to list)
Chair: Max Wyss, wapmerr@maxwyss.com
http://www.maxwyss.com/curriculum_e.html
On a global scale, earthquakes can now be reliably located and their
magnitude estimated within 10 to 15 minutes. In local, high performance seismograph
networks this is possible within seconds. From these capabilities derive
the following possibilities. (1) Using a local network (scale up to 300
km), early warnings can be issued, that is, critical facilities may be shut down
and people warned before the destructive S-waves arrive. (2) On a global
and regional scale (greater than 300 km), people and facilities may be warned
of an approaching tsunami. (3) Losses due to earthquakes can be estimated
within minutes, instead of days, to alert rescue teams of the need to mobilize. Some
of these techniques have been applied for decades, others only recently and still
others are mostly in the design stage. All of the techniques face obstacles
to efficient implementation. Some of these could be removed, if the required
funds were available, others need further research and testing to be reduced. This
session aims at summarizing the current level of capabilities to warn
and to outline approaches to remove obstacle that still prevent us
from effectively
helping the population in the struggle against earthquake disasters.
Research
Methods in Crisis Decision Making and Support (back
to list)
Chair: David
Mendonηa, david.mendonca@njit.edu,
Information Systems Dept., New Jersey Institute of Technology
By examining human response to crises, we improve our understanding of the
potential and limits of human and technological capabilities, thereby improving
societys
ability to plan for and respond to future events. Yet the
uniqueness, severity, spontaneity, complexity, and possible sensitivity
of crises
pose considerable challenges for scientific investigations into
crisis decision
making and supporting technologies.
Approaches to the study of crisis planning and response have encompassed
field and laboratory studies, as well as less conventional techniques
such as computer simulations. In many cases, there has been
a strong reliance on one-shot case studies, leading to questions
about the generalizability
of results.
Substantial challenges therefore remain for developing sound theory about
human decision making and the role of information technology in response
to disaster.
Accordingly, the main objective of this session is to display state
of the art research methods intended to improve understanding of
human decision
making during disaster response and recovery. The session will focus
on methods that have been applied and evaluated, whether in the field, laboratory
or in computer-based simulations. Of particular interest
are papers that address any of the following topic areas:
- Issues of internal and external validity
in disaster research methods;
- Integration of data from human and machine
(e.g., sensor-based) sources;
- Evaluation studies or review papers
of disaster research methodologies;
- Policy-level issues that may aid or
inhibit data collection;
- Adaptation of methodologies from outside
crisis response and management.
Of secondary interest are papers that present (but do not
report on the implementation or evaluation of) disaster research
methods. Papers
on disaster mitigation and training will generally be outside the
scope of this call.
Consistent with the theme of ISCRAM, papers are especially welcome that discuss
how disaster research methodologies can be used to inform the design of information
systems to support decision making during crisis response.
Stakeholder
Coordination for Crisis Management (back
to list)
Chair: Julie
Dugdale, dugdale@irit.fr
http://iihm.imag.fr/dugdale/
Co-chairs: Bernard Pavard, pavard@irit.fr
GRIC-IRIT
Cognitive Engineering Research Group Computer
Science Research Institute of Toulouse), France
Emergency response, management and training website - http://www.irit.fr/GRIC/ER/
Narjes Bellamine-Ben Saoud, narjes_bellamine@fulbrightweb.org
RIADI-GDL, (University of La Manouba), Tunisia.
The involvement of various stakeholders (such as policy makers,
health agency workers, and fire-fighters) in a crisis adds another
dimension
to the complexity
of the situation and greatly complicates coordination efforts. In order
to understand how best to respond to a crisis and to develop useful information
systems it is imperative that we realize that crises are perceived differently
by the various stakeholders. In particular, the stakeholders have different,
often conflicting viewpoints and priorities and since their work focuses
on different parts of the crisis lifecycle, the effects are seen in different
time periods (i.e. short, medium, or long term). Furthermore,
the political dimensions of the various groups greatly affect the
communication
and coordination
efforts during crisis situations.
In this special session we would like to explore the theory and
practices of stakeholder coordination. Specifically, we will examine how to design
information systems that, firstly, could help to understand the complex interactions
between the various groups and that, secondly, would help to improve stakeholder
coordination in responding to a crisis. In designing efficient
communication systems we need to identify the needs, resources,
intentions, and political
dimensions of each stakeholder group.
The design of information systems which can help to coordinate
the activities of the various stakeholders at any stage of the
crisis life-cycle is
a challenging task. To help meet this challenge we solicit papers which describe
case studies or which give descriptions of current or future information
systems concerned with stakeholder coordination. In addition, we are
also interested in exploring how the lessons learned from our current systems
can provide useful feedback in designing information systems of the future.
Questions around the topic of stakeholder coordination include:
- What is the influence of the different
stakeholders at various stages of the crisis and can we identify key
stakeholders for the different stages in the lifecycle of emergency
preparedness and response?
- How does the political dimension affect
needs analysis in designing information systems?
- How can communication platforms help
to overcome the coordination between stakeholders and make explicit
each stakeholder's needs, resources, intentions, and position?
- Can we identify and reconcile the various
stakeholder perceptions, and how can information systems help in this
task?
- What is the interplay between the various
stakeholders and how can we model the patterns of interaction stakeholders?
- What is
the role of the cognitive and social sciences in
designing information
systems for
crisis management?
- What tools are currently available to
help us understand and model the various viewpoints of the stakeholders?
The subject of stakeholder coordination is a topic which is of interest to
the academic attendees as well as being of practical relevance to emergency
response practitioners.
Standards
in Emergency Management Systems (back
to list)
Chair: Jane
Fedorowicz, jfedorowicz@bentley.edu
Co-chair: Rae
D. Anderson
Rae D. Anderson Professor of Accounting and Information Systems
Bentley College
Emergency Management Systems (EMS) bring together disparate organizations,
companies and government agencies needing to communicate and share
data in unforeseen circumstances. EMS are designed to work with existing data
and processes within each participating organization. As
a result, one of the biggest challenges EMS face is the disparity
among participants data,
communication, technology and process standards. This session addresses
the issue of EMS application and systems standards from a number of perspectives. Topics
include, but are not limited to:
- Business-to-government and government-to-government
standards
- Pros and cons of de facto and de jure standards
- When to adopt
regulated standards
and when to permit elective standards
- Role of web services and services oriented
architectures (SOA)
- Case studies describing how differences
in standards requirements are resolved in cross-jurisdictional and/or cross-agency
collaborations
- Governance of EMS standard setting processes
and operational EMS
- Political and regulatory processes for
standard setting
System
Dynamics for Emergency Response and Crisis Management (back
to list)
Chair: Peter
Otto, peteotto@gmail.com
Assistant Professor, MIS
Dowling College, School of Business
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/po36/
Consistent with the ISCRAM (International Community on Information Systems
for crisis response and management) conference theme to recognize the role
and function of information systems for the continuous parallel Lifecycle
of Emergency Preparedness and Response;
we issue a call for papers with a focus on applying system dynamics to gain
insights into the underlying dynamics in emergency response and crisis management.
One challenge in investigating emergency preparedness and response
is to not only understand the feedback effects and the potential
performance
of the complex situations that Emergency Response systems interact
with, but
also to obtain structural models from the people who are in the
domain. As
such, we are looking for research that helps us to better understand
the relationships among factors shown to be important in crisis
decision making
(e.g., stress, information overload and decision quality).
We welcome submissions of full papers (about 5,000 words) with specific topics
but not limited to, for example:
- What are the characteristics of organizational
crisis and how can information systems be used in emergency response and
crisis management?
- What is the leverage of different crisis
management policies?
- What is the effect of information overload
and stress on decision-making during a crisis situation?
- What factors, internal as well as external,
may determine emergency response and crisis recovery and how are these
factors interrelated?
Visualization
in Emergency Management (back
to list)
Chair: Erika Darling, edarling@mitre.org
Senior Human Factors Engineer
Center for Air Force Command and Control Systems
The Mitre Corporation
Emergency preparedness and response personnel are faced with volumes
of complex data from multiple sources and types that they must
evaluate, correlate
and
use to support time critical decisions. Data sources may include geospatial
data of various types, such as text, maps, and databases and open source
information, such as newspapers, internet, and broadcast. The personnel
prepare and present reportable findings utilizing hastily emerging data in
a rapid response time environment. Advancements in the effectiveness
of visualization can provide improvements throughout the lifecycle
of emergency preparedness and response.
Papers are invited that deal with any aspect of the design, development,
deployment, operation, or evaluation of information systems for
visualization pertinent to
the lifecycle of emergency preparedness. Of particular interest
are innovative information systems for visualization that have been
verified
through observation
or experiment.
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