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The 6th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management

Ph.D. Colloquium

10 May 2009

ISCRAM 2009 Doctoral Symposium Photo Roster

1

Tina Comes

Univ. Karlsruhe Germany

Claudio Sapateiro

Univ. of Lisbon Portugal

Julie Dugdale

Univ. of Grenoble 2 France

Photo not available

Narjes Bellamine-Ben Saoud

Univ. of Manouba

Tunisia

Steve Fortier

The George Washington Univ. USA

Raj Sharman

Univ. at Buffalo USA

Simon French

The Univ. of Manchester

United Kingdom

Yasushi Sugimoto

The Univ. of Manchester

United Kingdom

Rego Granlund

Linköping Univ. Sweden

Gaia Trecarichi

Univ. of Trento Italy

ISCRAM 2009 Doctoral Symposium Photo Roster

2

Anna Gryszkiewicz

Chalmers Univ. of Technology

Sweden

Marcus Vogt

Bond Univ. Australia

Sophia B. Liu

Univ. of Colorado at Boulder

USA

Rebecca Walton

Univ. of Washington USA

David Mendonça

New Jersey Institute of Technology

USA

Kim Weyns

Lund Univ. Sweden

Helena Mentis

The Pennsylvania State Univ. USA

Willem Muhren

Tilburg Univ. The Netherlands

Comes Decision Maps to cope with uncertainties in MCDA

PhD Colloquium of the 6th International ISCRAM Conference – Gothenburg, Sweden, May 2009

Decision Maps to cope with uncertainties in multi-criteria decision support systems.

An integrated approach.

Tina Comes Institute for Industrial Production

Universität Karlsruhe (TH) [email protected]

ABSTRACT

The resolution of complex decision situations in disaster management requires input from dif-ferent disciplines and fields of expertise. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is a tech-nique for decision support which aims at providing transparent and coherent support in com-plex decision situations taking into account subjective preferences of the decision makers, experts and stakeholders involved. However, the fact that the information and knowledge brought together to form the basis for the decision making are of different type and certainty is usually not reflected in MCDA. In contrast, there are several techniques to deal with the different kinds of uncertainties: Bayesian Networks pursue a probabilistic approach deriving conditional probability distributions from statistics. Fuzzy reasoning deals with integrating vague and linguistic variables into the decision process. Scenario-based reasoning (SBR) is frequently used to assess multiple possible and plausible future developments thus providing a rationale for strategic plans and actions. The main idea of the Ph.D. thesis is using Decision Maps to study the relations and interactions of several types of information, decision alternatives, attributes, and criteria in order to evaluate decision alternatives. One of the most crucial points will be the research for operators calculating or estimating inferences between different kinds of variables to allow for an estimation of combined effects and respective influences. Finally, a case study on the basis of real-world environmental management scenarios by public Dutch and Danish chemical incident crisis management authorities will be used to illustrate the techniques and to highlight their main features.

MOTIVATION

By participating in the Ph.D. Student Colloquium of the ISCRAM 2009 conference, expect to receive feedback on substance, organization, and conduct of my proposed work in order to re-fine and focus my thesis research based on the input from the discussion. As my Ph.D. thesis proposes new methods for the integration of decision making and information systems for a more effective and transparent disaster management and response, I am looking forward presenting and discussing these approaches with experts, colleagues and practitioners. Furthermore I think that by contributing the proposed new methods during the Ph.D. Colloquium, other participants can benefit from my experience. Additionally, I am looking forward to getting to know the research topics of the other participants. When discussing each others work, I hope to explore overlappings and to detect potential areas for future research collaborations that will be fruitful for both sides.



RESEARCH STATEMENT

Man-made or natural emergency situations share the necessity for a coherent and effective disaster management. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is often chosen as the basis for decision support in crisis management (see e.g. French and Geldermann, 2005; Geldermann et. al., 2009; Papamichail and French, 2005), since it aims at providing decision support for complex situations with conflicting objectives. MCDA methods have become popular because of their transparency and intuitiveness. Yet, their application can become problematic in uncertain situations, as usually the assumption that relevant criteria are well-defined (i.e. for each alternative the value of all attributes can be determined and aggregated to criteria), and certain (i.e. the value assigned is treated as a deterministic variable) is made (see Fenton and Neil, 2001). Furthermore, often only the uncertainties concerning preferences are covered in the uncertainty analyses (see e.g. Bertsch, Geldermann and Rentz, 2007). However, in an emergency uncertainty can arise from various sources (cf. Bertsch, 2008).

While there exist several MCDA methods determining criteria values with the help of attributes (see e.g. Figueira, Greco and Ehrgott, 2005), the question how attribute values are estimated is usually not part of MCDA despite having a huge impact on the decision. That is why the Ph.D. thesis suggests basing decisions on a broader foundation by taking into account the underlying models and assumptions, particularly the interrelations among variables. This approach offers the possibility to understand better the reasons why an alternative attains a certain performance. Thus, an in-depth analysis of alternatives exploiting the novel insights about their respective strengths and drawbacks is facilitated, allowing for the refinement of alternatives or the combination of alternatives to optimal strategies.

One of the main challenges is the fact that in emergency management diverse types of uncertainties must be taken into account (cf. French and Niculae, 2005). In some cases, experts can limit the range of possible values for certain variables to an interval. These intervals can be used to select values that are considered as representative and allow for the construction of scenarios (cf. Tamura et. al., 2000). In other cases, statistics allowing for the determination of probability distributions are available. But in crisis management, situations are often singular, and judgments stay vague. Then, relations can be described qualitatively using Fuzzy variables (cf. Cameron and Peloso, 2005). Facing these different types of uncertainty and reasoning methods, it is crucial to deal with the problem of different uncertainties in a systematic way in order to give a clear picture of the consequences of a decision for a more transparent and traceable crisis management.

For dealing with probabilistic and Fuzzy models, problem structuring techniques integrating interrelations have been developed. While Bayesian Networks describe the interactions between variables in terms of probabilistic distributions (e.g. Pearl, 1985), Fuzzy cognitive/causal maps integrate vague relations (for a general introduction see Kosko, 1986, for an application in disaster management see Espinosa-Paredes et. al., 2008). A common feature of both approaches is the representation of the problem as network, where variables are depicted as nodes, whereas relations are captured in directed arcs. The Ph.D. thesis extends these networks to decision maps that integrate the MCDA attribute tree as well as all the variables that influence at least one attribute value. Though there are approaches exploiting Bayesian Networks (Watthayu and Peng, 2004) and causal map structures (see Montibeller and Belton, 2006, 2009) for MCDA, none of them combines different types of uncertainties and the respective inference methods to an integrated model. In the case of scenario-based reasoning, there are a few approaches integrating scenarios into decision



support systems (Durbach and Stewart, 2003; Jenkins, 2000), but none of them applies networks to guarantee for the consistency of the scenarios.

During the work on the Ph.D. thesis, a method integrating scenario-based reasoning and MCDA into the proposed framework that is illustrated by the following very small example has been elaborated. Assume, a truck slips, gets off the road, and is stuck in a small ditch (cf. Figure 1). The truck transports chemicals, the tank is ruptured, and the chemicals are leaking. The corresponding problem structure

can be represented as a causal map of certain/uncertain variables (represented as black/white boxes, cf. Figure 2). The interrelations can be exploited to inductively construct scenarios that are internally consistent. In a second step decision alternatives are evaluated under each scenario, and the results are aggregated according to the preferences of the decision makers.

Analogous to the approach in the example, the decision map framework divides variables into three classes: decision alternatives, certainly known boundary conditions and uncertain chance nodes. To model interactions that were assumed to be purely deterministic in the example, four types of relations are introduced:

• Deterministic: State of successor can be calculated. • Probabilistic: Relation can be modelled using probability distributions.

Figure 1: Example situation sketch

Figure 2: Causal map for the example



• Fuzzy: Relation can be modelled using qualitative statements. • Scenario: State of successor can be limited to a certain interval.

Figure 3 shows an exemplary decision map representing the relations between different nodes including the well-known MCDA attribute tree. A crucial point in the Ph.D. thesis will be the definition of operators to evaluate combined effects of different chance nodes when different classes of relations are involved. While methods to integrate scenario-based reasoning into the proposed framework have already been elaborated, research on the integration of probabilistic and Fuzzy reasoning is ongoing.

CONCLUSION

The approach presented here aims at facilitating decision making under uncertainty in emer-gency management and response, allowing for deeper insights into the decision situation and exploring the robustness of the decision. Methods to integrate scenarios into the proposed framework have already been elaborated, whereas work integrating Bayesian Networks and Fuzzy causal maps is still ongoing. Additionally, the proposed methodology is used in an elicitation process with experts and users. The aim of this process is on the one hand to validate the approach presented and in the other hand to tailor the model so that it fits the needs of decision makers to ensure a better emergency management.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research is closely related to work carried out within the DIADEM project (see http://www.ist-diadem.eu/) funded by the European Commission under the EU Seventh Framework Programme. I wish to acknowledge the support by the Commission and all in-volved project partners.

Figure 3: Exemplary Decision Map



REFERENCES

1. Bertsch V (2008) Uncertainty Handling in Multi Attribute Decision Support for Industrial Risk Management, Karlsruhe

2. Bertsch V., Geldermann J. and Rentz O. (2007) Preference Sensitivity Analyses for Multi-Attribute Decision Support, Operations Research Proceedings 2006, 411-416.

3. Cameron, E., Peloso, G. (2005) Risk Management and the Precautionary Principle: A Fuzzy Logic Model, Risk Analysis: An International Journal, 25, 901-911.

4. Durbach, I. and Stewart, T. (2003) Integrating scenario planning and goal programming, Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, 12, 261-271.

5. Espinosa-Paredes, G., Nuñez-Carrera, A., Laureano-Cruces, A., Vázquez-Rodríguez, A. and Espinosa-Martinez, E. (2008) Emergency management for a nuclear power plant using fuzzy cognitive maps, Annals of Nuclear Energy, 35, 2387-2396.

6. Fenton, N. and Neil, M. (2001) Making decisions: using Bayesian nets and MCDA, Knowledge-Based Systems, 14, 307-325.

7. Figueira J., Greco S. and Ehrgott, M. (2005) Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis: State of the Art Surveys, Springer, Boston, Dordrecht, London.

8. French, S. and Geldermann, J. (2005) The varied contexts of environmental decision problems and their implications for decision support, Environmental Science & Policy, 8, 378-391.

9. French, S. and Niculae, C. (2005) Believe in the Model: Mishandle the Emergency, Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 2(1), 1-16.

10. Geldermann, J., Bertsch, V., Treitz, M., French, S., Papamichail, K. and Hämäläinenm, R. (2009) Multi-criteria decision support and evaluation of strategies for nuclear remediation management, Omega, 37, 238-251.

11. Jenkins, L. (2000) Selecting scenarios for environmental disaster planning, European Journal of Operational Research, 121, 275-286.

12. Kosko, B. (1986) Fuzzy cognitive maps, International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 24, 65-75.

13. Montibeller, G. and Belton, V. (2006) Causal maps and the evaluation of decision options − a review, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 57, 779-791.

14. Montibeller, G. and Belton, V. (2009) Qualitative operators for reasoning maps: Evaluating multi-criteria options with networks of reasons, European Journal of Operational Research, 195, 829-840.

15. Papamichail, K. and French, S. (2005) Design and evaluation of an intelligent decision support system for nuclear emergencies, Decision Support Systems, 41, 84-111.



16. Pearl, J. (1985) Bayesian networks: A model of self-activated memory for evidential reasoning, Proceedings of the 7th Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, University of California, Irvine, 329-334.

17. Tamura, H., Yamamoto, K., Tomiyama, S., Hatono, I. (2000) Modeling and analysis of decision making problem for mitigating natural disaster risks, European Journal of Operational Research, 122, 461-468.

18. Watthayu, W., Peng, Y. (2004) A Bayesian network based framework for multi-criteria decision making, Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis, Whistler, BC, Canada.



CURRICULUM VITAE – TINA COMES

PERSONAL DATA

Name: Tina Comes

Date and place of birth: 09.04.1982 in Koblenz, Germany

Citizenship: German

Address: Yorckstr. 4−6, 75177 Pforzheim, Germany

Phone at work: +49-(0)721-6 08 44 10

Mobile: +49-(0)163-73 59 48 2

E-Mail: [email protected]

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND AND WORK EXPERIENCE

2001 Abitur (A-Level) Kurfürst-Balduin-Gymnasium Münstermaifeld (Grammar School), Münstermaifeld, Germany

2001 – 2007 Studies in Applied Mathematics at the University of Trier, Germany, the University of Lille (Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille), France, and the University of Erlangen (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)

2004 – 2007 Studies in Philosophy and Literature at the University of Erlangen (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)

2001 Internship at Deutsche Postbank AG, Bonn, Germany: corporate communications

2001 – 2003 Working Student for Mitteilungsblatt der Verbandsgemeinde Untermosel, Höhr-Grenzhausen, Germany: editor

2004 Internship at Dr. Dr. Heissmann AG, Wiesbaden, Germany: software development

2005 Internship at Hellenikon Idyllion, Selianitika, Greece: corporate communications

2005 – 2007 Working Student for Michael-Müller-Verlag, Erlangen, Germany: editor

since Jan 2008 Scientific Research Assistant at the French German Institute for Environmental Research (DFIU/IFARE), University of Karlsruhe, Germany

STAYS ABROAD

2003 – 2004 University of Lille (Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille), France

Feb – Mar 2005 Internship at Hellenikon Idyllion, Selianitika, Greece



FIELDS OF RESEARCH

� Multi Criteria Decision Analysis and Scenario-Based Reasoning � Decision Support Systems for Emergency Management � Uncertainties and Robustness � System Dynamics

PUBLICATIONS

Fröhling, M.; Hiete, M.; Rentz, O., Ilsen, R. and Comes, T (2008) Otello - Entwicklung eines Integrated Assessment Models für ein nationales Emissionsmanagement. In: VDI (Ed.) Emissionsminderung 2008 - Stand - Konzepte - Fortschritte, VDI-Bericht 2035, VDI Verlag, Düsseldorf, 241-245.

Comes, T., Hiete, M., Wijngaards, N. and Kempen. M. (2009) Integrating Scenario-Based Reasoning into Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. In: J. Landgren, U. Nulden and B. Van de Walle (Eds), Proceedings of the 6th International ISCRAM Conference, in press.

LANGUAGE SKILLS

German mother tongue

English fluent in written and spoken

French fluent in written and spoken

Fortier Emergency Response Mechanism for Chemical Facilities


Refining an Emergency Response Mechanism for Chemical Facilities

Stephen C. Fortier The George Washington University

Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management

School of Engineering and Applied Science Washington, D.C., USA

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

Harmful contact incidents at many chemical facilities present the potential for significant loss of life or property for the site itself, as well as the surrounding community. The threat to these facilities has increased significantly since 9/11, because of the propensity of terror organizations to target this industry.

Regardless of the origin of the threat, the emergency response mechanism should be the same. This research-in-progress will produce a model emergency response mechanism for a typical chemical facility. In addition, this research will identify state-of-the-art information technologies that could be inserted into the emergency model response mechanism and determine the impact that these technologies would have. This will be accomplished through simulation. Finally, the research will measure the cost of the information technology elements within the model. The benefit of conducting this research will provide the chemical industry with a model emergency response mechanism, a review of the state-of-the-art technologies that could be used to improve the response mechanism, and scientific analysis of the costs associated with investing in information technologies in their response mechanisms.

PERSONAL STATEMENT

I have three goals for attending the Ph.D colloquium. First, I would like to review the work that others are doing in this research area. I believe that could learn a lot from hearing about current research in IT for crisis response and management and it will help me in my research. Second, I would like to share my current research with others in the field. I can learn whether or not the work I am doing has value and how it may be helpful to others. Third, I would like to meet others so that it will improve my social network in the research community.

RESEARCH STATEMENT

Chemical facilities have developed safety and security protection mechanisms to control access, but these mechanisms were not originally designed to protect against the threat of terrorism. Although there is legislation in the U.S. that requires certain reporting requirements, the onus to provide protection and emergency response lies with the private companies themselves. The size and financial health of each chemical facility has a major bearing on its ability to provide an effective and timely response to harmful contact incidents.

This research is answering the following questions:

1. What are the essential elements of an effective and efficient chemical facility emergency response mechanism?

2. Does the size of a chemical facility influence its ability to provide an effective response to a threat?

3. What technologies are currently being used by chemical facilities to protect themselves? What technologies (mainly information technology) could be utilized to improve the chemical facility emergency response mechanism?

4. How do you measure the value and effectiveness of information technologies in this environment?

Chemical sites have an inherent risk of causing property or humanity loss due to an uncontrolled release of chemicals. The risk of potential unwanted exposure has increased since 9/11, since terror organizations have targeted chemical facilities. The U.S. government has undertaken a program to protect its critical infrastructure assets. The chemical industry is one of the critical infrastructure components. Although the U.S. government



has enacted legislation, the onus for protection and response falls largely on the individual chemical companies. Chemical facilities come in all shapes and sizes, and it is more difficult for the smaller facilities to protect themselves, and hence respond to the new threats.

Many of the managers of critical infrastructure assets use the “acceptable risk” method for protecting their assets and they do not consult with people in the existing communities. For instance, the chemical industry views risk in three ways: chemical inventory, worst-case assessment and population at risk. “Since 9/11, in the absence of federal legislation, ACC members have led the way, investing nearly $3 billion on facility security enhancements such as intrusion prevention/detection and perimeter protection, screening employees and improving cyber-security (ACC, 2007).” But the efforts of the ACC members have been focused on prevention not response.

The chemical industry is pushing the notion of inherent safer design in their facilities. Yet, the corporate managers have not ensured buy in from its factory workers. Chemical plant workers are not happy with recent government regulations (Hendershot, Berger, 2006) of their industry.

A United Steel Worker’s (USW) analysis (Schierow, 2005) of the Government’s document revealed the following faults:

• Employees are not involved in plant safety

• There is little or no protection for whistle blowers

• Chemical companies are not required to use less hazardous chemicals or inherently safer technologies

• Potential preemption of more stringent extant laws and propose state laws

“The Homeland Security rules for the nation's high risk chemical plants fall far short of what is needed to truly make facilities safe from terrorist attacks,” said USW President Leo W. Gerard. “It's another example of the Bush Administration's attempt to appear as if it is taking care of industrial safety problems. Security actions alone are insufficient to protect workers and communities.”

Emergency Response Mechanisms

During the operation phase of many engineering systems, a considerable number of problems, faults, and incidents can occur leading to direct and indirect consequences ranging from citizen complaints and increased operational cost to human lives losses and possibly to disasters. This is especially true when dealing with chemical processing or producing facilities.

In order to retain an operation mode that is considered “normal” the engineers are using models and techniques from a wide range of principals like risk and barrier analysis, cognitive analysis, psychology, ergonomics, computer-human interaction, etc. They are aiming to design better and safer facilities and proper operating procedures to minimize the number of harmful contact incidents. However, during the operation stage of many engineering systems, the timely warning and response of imminent problems is more desirable in terms of economic, political, environmental, and human resources than to deal with the outbreak and aftermath in an ad-hoc manner.

Thus chemical facilities managers and personnel have to receive and understand the information that is transmitted by the components of the system and by the surrounding environment indicating potential occurrence of unwanted events. Based on these information flows the personnel must react accordingly in order to prevent the unwanted events from occurring or mitigate loss if an event occurs. In this framework, information-based computer systems and communication systems can help managers and personnel to prevent operational problems and failures by informing them about the inherent risks and hazards in a timely manner by delivering a clear message to stakeholders and by providing a list of emergency response procedures.

An early warning system (EWS) in engineering facilities, specifically chemical facilities, can assist in estimating the occurrence and probability of operational problems during operations and to provide advice on how to respond to incidents.

RESEARCH PROGRAM AND GOALS

The purpose of this research is to characterize the methods, practices, experiences and problems with chemical facilities responding to terrorism, insider threats, or natural disasters. Speed to identification of a problem and response to mitigate potential losses is critical. Special interest is being paid to small production facilities where reports have indicated that these facilities lack the resources to implement rudimentary safety and security



precautions. A specific concern is how information technology is used to provide the situational awareness of the inherent risks in the environment.

A review of the literature finds that there is little published in the area of emergency response mechanisms for chemical facilities. The following are areas that need to be addressed:

• Lack of a defined chemical facility response mechanism. Other than reading incident reports, chemical facilities do not publish their response mechanism, including their policies and procedures.

• No comprehensive description of IT mechanism for response. The use of a horn as an alarm system for employees and citizens is not sufficient in today’s society of social issues and the threat of terrorism.

• No metrics have been established for valuing IT. It is difficult for an enterprise to rationalize spending corporate resources on a technology solution that may never be utilized.

This is a two phase research project. The first phase will analyze relevant data, and conduct site visits to chemical facilities.

As a case study, 12 chemical facilities have been selected to analyze the response mechanism when a facility experiences a harmful contact incident. Of the 12, there is a mixture of large and small chemical producing/processing facilities. In addition to the review of the actual chemical facilities, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data is being analyzed to enhance the views developed by the modeling. The analysis of the data and the site visits are currently underway.

This research will take a look at a new way to leverage the above mechanisms to achieve information reuse and drastically improved situational awareness. A systems integration approach will be employed to risk mitigation and vulnerability reduction. The IDEF0 (FIPS 183, 1993) modeling will be used to bind the problem space. Once bounded, application of IDEF0 models allows the decomposition of the activities of the chemical facility emergency response mechanism. The application of IDEF0 model will identify the information flow between the activities. These information flows are integral to understanding critical elements of the response mechanism. The “as is” models are being developed and they will be “normalized” to a single model to characterize the typical emergency response mechanism.

In the second phase of this research, the authors will propose a “to be” view of an efficient response mechanism for a chemical facility. There are extant and evolving technologies that could be used for the response mechanism when emergencies occur at chemical facilities and this research will determine what is being used in the industry.

Further, this research will simulate the utilization of various technologies to determine the potential benefit for the response mechanism. There is a number of off-the-shelf simulation modeling tools that have been identified that could be used on this project. One simulation tool will be selected once the “to be” models are completed.

The technologies included in the simulation are, but not limited to:

• Alert mechanisms such as chemical sensors, text messaging, Twitter messaging, SMS messaging, and broadcast alerts

• Analysis mechanisms such as atmospheric dispersion models, evacuation models, and damage assessment models

• Decision support systems and associated technology

The expected impact of this research on response mechanisms for chemical facilities includes the following:

a. Normalized view of an efficient response mechanism

b. Understanding of the impact the size of a chemical facility has on the structure and processes of the response mechanism

c. Evaluation of current technology on related to the response mechanism

d. Information technology valuation of potential solutions for the response mechanism

The result of this modeling activity would allow for information sharing and consistency between the mechanisms of response, plant operation, and external response organizations. This could potentially improve emergency preparedness planning.

This methodology, taken from business process engineering, will rationalize the potential threats to a chemical facility and the possible actions one could take to mitigate potential losses.



Finally, the valuation or cost of implementing technology components into the emergency response mechanism will be analyzed. Cost is a critical element in developing emergency response systems. Chemical facilities, like most other businesses, do not have an infinite budget for infrastructure. This research will look at a number of current cost models, like parametric analysis, bottom up, expert judgment and feature based costing to develop a model that can be commonly applied to the information technologies suggested in the simulation models. Further, this research will investigate the use of AIE to determine if can provide measurable improvement for IT decisions. The cost estimation methodology will be selected at the same time that the simulation tool will be selected.

REFERENCES

1. ACC (2007), http://www.americanchemistry.com/s_responsiblecare/sec_members.asp? CID=1319&DID=4862

2. FIPS 183, (1993) FIPS Publication 183, http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/idef02.doc.

3. Schierow, L, (2005) Chemical Plant Security, CRS Report for Congress, Updated February 14, 2005

4. Hendershot, D.C., Berger, S. (2006), “Inherently Safer Design and Chemcial Plant Security and Safety.” Prepared for submission to the United States Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, 21 June 2006, Washington, D.C.



Stephen C. Fortier 12000 Market Street, #454, Reston, VA 20190, [email protected], 304.268.0811 (m)

Education

George Washington University, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, doctoral (Ph.D.) candidate. Research Fellow of the Engineering School and the ICDRM, www.gwu.edu/~icdrm/People/fortier.htm

Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Executive MBA program (TPMG7), 2001

George Mason University, School of Information Technology and Engineering, Department of Information and Software System Engineering, M.Sc., Information Systems, 1991

West Virginia University, M.Sc., Safety Studies, 1983; B.S.J., minors in chemical engineering, English and political science, 1981

Experience

HMS Technologies, Vice President of Professional Services, June 2008 to present

Mr. Fortier is responsible for managing the services contracts for the company. He ensures that all programs are managed to the highest industry standards, complying with HMS quality standards. He is the program manager for the Veteran’s Administration National Data Center Program, which is an effort to consolidate information systems from multiple locations to five regional data centers. He also manages the $90M National Wireless program for the VA. Mr. Fortier is also responsible for developing the policies and procedures for HMS. He leads the corporate effort to qualify for CMMI Level 3. He also leads the business development activities of the company.

Ambit Group, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President, April 2007 to May 2008

Responsible for managing the IT business unit while providing oversight to the policies, procedures of business operations. He established a quality control program for all Ambit projects and programs, instituting an earned value management system and strict program management control mechanisms. He established a Quality Surveillance Plan and an Earned Value Management System (EVMS) for the FCC Auctions contract. Several of Mr. Fortier’s programs were Performance Based contracts. Mr. Fortier also developed the Quality Management Plan and supported the development of the Program Management Plan for the PBGC’s Office of Information Technology (CIO). Mr. Fortier was responsible for strategic planning, new business orders, pipeline development and efficient management of a number of business development activities. He evaluates the market position of the competition and their offering and devises strategies to effectively compete. Provided strategic business development planning and leadership and established policies, rules and methods. Also was responsible for the IT operations of the company. Helped Ambit grow from a $3.6M company to an $11M company in eight month. Lead the capture activity and/or wrote numerous winning proposals for Ambit including wins at FCC, PTO, PBGC, DHS, USCG, USDA, VA, VHA and others. These wins amounted to approximately $35M in new business over the next five years

L-3 Communications, Titan Group

Vice President and Solutions Architect, EISD, 2006 to March 2007

Responsible for leading teams that provide technical solutions to large-scale system engineering problems. Functions as the lead technical architect on major program pursuits, usually in the $100+M area. Worked with business development, operations and marketing to pursue and capture major programs with the DoD and civil government agencies. Provided thought leadership for complex information technology problems. Supported the technical solution development of the system architecture for the SBInet proposal to DHS. Developing the technical solution for the $500M AFSPC Uni-Comm program. Integrates business best practices, such as SOAs, SLAs, ITIL and Six Sigma, into integrated solutions.

Senior Vice President, Business Development, ATS Sector 2003 to 2006



Responsible for the business development activities for the Applied Technologies Sector, a $300M business unit. Responsible for strategic planning, new business orders, pipeline development and efficient management of the business development organization. The Sector grew over 30 percent a year, without acquisitions, from 2004 to 2006. Evaluated the market position of the competition and their offering and devises strategies to effectively compete. Provides strategic business development planning and leadership for the Sector. Manages the business development staff. Member of the Titan Business Development Council, which establishes policies, rules and methods for the Titan Corporation. Experience in structuring capture campaigns and directing the execution of the campaign. Directed preparation of all required reports and plans. Led or participated in several $100 million new business opportunities. Supported business development activities in Europe and Asia.

Cigital Incorporated, Vice President Government Solutions, 2002 to 2003

Established a government services practice within the company, and responsible for new business development and operations. Responsible for bringing Cigital’s software quality management (SQM) and software risk management (SRM) solutions and proprietary technologies to information technology projects within the federal government. Cigital’s main technical focus was information assurance and IT security. He has established a quality control program for all Cigital projects and programs, instituting an earned value management system and strict program management control mechanisms. Managed Cigital Labs, the largest independent laboratory dedicated to analyzing software behavior. Managed 15 Ph.D. and Master’s level engineers and scientists.

Established policies and procedures for winning government business, including the development of a new business pipeline, account plans, capture plans and proposals. Set the strategy for government business with both civilian agencies and DoD. Worked with the USDA, Department of Homeland Security, NIH, Navy, Missile Defense Agency, HUD, NASA and others. Created a GSA Schedule 70, developed partnerships with other system integrators, and teamed to get on government contract vehicles. Supervised a staff of two business development professionals.

Managed Cigital Labs, a research and development group that is focused on software security, reliability and quality, while performing work for Government agencies such as DARPA, NSA, CIA, Air Force Research Labs, Army and NIST.

Titan Systems Corporation, AverStar Group (formally AverStar, and Intermetrics, Inc.), 1992 to 2002

VICE PRESIDENT, TECHNOLOGY, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, 1999 TO 2002

Managed the AverStar technology investments and leverages these technologies company-wide. The office served as an incubator for developing technologies that offer significant technical leverage, and supports revenue-producing products and services. Successful products and services are either migrated into existing line organizations or unique line groups are created. Supported, as part of the senior management team, the growth of AverStar from a $50 million to a $230 million business in four years. Personally captured $60 million in business during that time period. Acted as a capture manager and was the program manager on a number of strategic wins, including a $10 million USDA CIO award and CIO-SP and CIO-SP2.

Vice President, Information Technology Consulting, 1998 to 1999

Managed a corporate-wide strategic business team that offered consulting services. Offered e-business services specializing in creating and integrating Internet portals for the financial services industry. Offering also included business process reengineering, custom software solutions, and studies and analysis. Directed new business development activities of the $10 million per year offering

Vice President and General Manager, Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), 1992 to 1998

Promoted to corporate officer of AverStar. Managed the CAE group, which provided consulting and engineering services to both commercial and Government customers in the area of information



technology solutions, the exploitation of Internet technologies, and B2B marketplace solutions. Commercial customers included Solectron, IBM, Hadco and HP.

Institute for Defense Analysis and Columbia Services Group, Inc., Consultant, 1991 to 1992.

Work at IDA Computer and Software Engineering Division included analysis of the proposed Strategic Defense Initiative software engineering effort. Supported broad Department of Defense concerns in computer support. At CSG, analyzed the current FAA and industry software safety/security techniques and requirements. Conducted systems analysis, design and requirements analysis for these programs. Developed and implemented a comprehensive set of safety program measurement tools to assure that current and future FAA aviation programs maintain an acceptable level of safety and security.

BTG Inc., Deputy Director, Product Support and Integration Division, (PSID), 1989 to 1991.

Managed the technical operations and was responsible for the financial success of PSID. Reported directly to the Vice President/General Manager and directed the activities of hardware design, system engineering, system integration and technical support. The division, with annual sales in excess of $12 million, also provided consulting services to commercial, civil government, and DoD clients.

E-Systems, Melpar Division, Program Manager, 1985 to 1989.

Managed the design and development of multi-million dollar classified intelligence programs, for various DoD customers. These hardware and software development efforts included the integration of radio frequency, high frequency, wide area network, and satellite communication technology. Managed a team of 30+ people with contracts worth in excess of $30 million.

University of Southern California, Lecturer, Pentagon Extended-Campus, 1984 to 1986.

Taught Master of Science-level courses in system safety engineering and management for USC’s Institute of System and Safety Management. This evening part-time appointment required lesson plans, lecture material, course development, examinations, and regular office hours.

Applied Technology Associates, Inc., Systems Engineer, 1983 to 1985.

West Virginia University, Program Analyst, 1982 to 1983.

Syracuse Herald Journal, Staff Reporter, summers 1981 to 1982.

Professional Affiliations and Activities

ACT/IAC Partner’s Program, 2008

ACT/IAC SIG on Homeland Protection, Member, 2007

National Defense Industrial Association, Member, 2004

NTIA Communications & Information Sector Working Group (CISWG) on Critical Infrastructure Protection, Member, 2002 to present

ITAA Information Security Programs Committee Member, 1999

Electronic Design Interchange Format (EDIF) Steering Committee Chairman, 1999 to present

The Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits (IPC) Working Group on CAD to CAM Data Transfer, Member, 1995-1999

Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Industry Standards Roadmap Working Group on Manufacturing and Test. Work sponsored by CAD Framework Initiative, EDAC, Sematech, Lead Member, 1995 Conference on Computer Assurance, COMPASS Publication Chair, 1995 to 1997

Electronic Industries Association, Electronic Data Interchange Format, Test working group sub-committee, Technical Co-chair, 1994 to 1997

American Society of Safety Engineers, 1984, Member



Selected Technical Publications

Fortier, S.C., Volk, J.H., “Defining Requirements and Applying Information Modeling for Protecting Enterprise Assets,” book chapter in Intelligent Engineering Systems and Computational Cybernetics, J.A.T. Machado, B. Patkai, I.J. Rudas, Editors, Springer, February 2009.

Fortier, S.C., Dokas, I.M., “Setting the Specification Framework of an Early Warning System Using IDEF0 and Information Modeling,” Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference, May 2008, Washington D.C.

Fortier, S.C., Volk, J.H., “Defining Requirements for ad hoc Coalition Systems during Disasters.” Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Computational Cybernetics,” August 20-22, 2006, Tallinn, Estonia.

Fortier, S.C., Volk, J.H., “Applying Information Modeling for Protecting Enterprise Assets from Threats.” Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Computational Cybernetics,” August 20-22, 2006, Tallinn, Estonia.

Fortier, S.C., “Information Assurance for Government Agencies, What Security Should Mean to You.” Published in the Proceeding of the Forum on Information Security in Government, MIS Training Institute, April 22-24, 2003, Alexandria, Virginia.

Fortier, S.C., “Information Assurance for Government Agencies.” Proceeding of the InfoSec World 2003 Conference, MIS Training Institute, March 2003, Orlando, Florida.

Fortier, S.C., Davis D.D., “Scalable System Level Design Language.” Proceedings of the Forum on Design Languages 2000, September 4-8, 2000, Tubingen, Germany.

Fortier, S.C., Shombert, L.A., “Network Profiling and Data Visualization.” Proceedings of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Information Assurance and Security Workshop, June 6-7, 2000, West Point, NY.

Fortier, S.C., J. Rees, “Application of EWatch Information Assurance Probes.” Proceedings of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Information Assurance and Security Workshop, June 6-7, 2000, West Point, NY.

Alexander, P., Kamath, R., Barton, D.L., Fortier, S.C., “Facets and Domains in Rosetta,” Proceedings of the Forum on Design Languages 1999, September 1999, Lyon, France.

Barton, D.L., Fortier, S.C., “Using a Systems Description Language for Complete Avionics Systems,” Proceedings of AUTOTESTCON, IEEE Computer Society Press, Anaheim, CA, 1997

Fortier, S.C. “Applying Standards to Integrated Process and Product Design.” Proceedings of the 1994 Electronic CAD Interoperability and Integration Conference. CAD Framework Initiative, Austin, Texas, 1994.

Fortier, S.C. “Applying Standards for Modeling Physical Design and Test Information for Electronics.” Proceedings of the Conference on Advances in Modeling and Simulation, U.S. Army Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, April 1994.

Fortier, S.C., and Michael, J.B. “A Risk-Based Approach to Cost-Benefit Analysis of Software Safety Activities.” Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Conference on Computer Assurance. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, 1993, pp. 53-60.

Michael, J.B., and Fortier, S.C. “Understanding and Managing Software Safety Assessment Activities.” Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference on Reliability, Quality Control and Risk Assessment. IASTED-ACTA Press, Anaheim, California, 1992, pp. 28-31.

Fortier, S.C., and Wilmot, A. “Test and Diagnostics Product Data Representation.” Proceedings of IEEE Automatic Testing Conference ‘92. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, ‘92, pp. 41-47.

Security Clearances:



DoD Top Secret (current)

NSA Top Secret/SCI/Full Polygraph (inactive)

NATO Secret (inactive)

Gryszkiewicz Interactive Crisis Management System

2009 ISCRAM PhD Colloquium Research Statement Interactive Decision Support System

for Crisis Management

Anna Gryszkiewicz Interaction Design Collegium, CSE

Chalmers University of Technology, SE-41296 Gothenburg [email protected]

ABSTRACT

A crisis today concerns a large number of stakeholders, and many different actors need to collaborate during the crisis management process. This PhD. project aims to investigate how information is shared among the crisis management actors, investigate how the overall organization works, and finally to propose a design for an interactive decision support system. The purpose is to find design suggestions that contribute to common operational picture among the different actors, and that helps locating and visualizing the information each actor needs for an efficient crisis management.

Each actor is affected by local, national, and also international regulations and systems for crisis management. Crises vary from sudden fires, larger accidents, terror attacks, to effects of global warning - each event having different actors and different information processing demands.

The project started in April last year, and is a part of Security Arena. A participation in the ISCRAM doctorial colloquium now, would take place at the best possible time in my project. I have been working long enough in the project to get an understanding of my research area, and I am right now working on my first publication. The colloquium would be a great opportunity to get more input on my work so far, and reflections about my plans for next steps. It is also very valuable for me to meet other researchers in the same research area.

RESEARCH STATEMENT

This research project is a part of Security Arena, and aims to give design suggestions for an interactive crisis management system. The purpose of the system is to support decision making and information sharing during a crisis.

Crisis management today is very complex. Plans, regulations, and laws do exist and are a support for how crises should be handled, but in practise handling a crisis becomes much more challenging. A crisis can be for example a forest fire, flooding, terrorist attack or the effects of global warming, and all need to be handled different ways and including different actors. An actor needs to consider regulations on local, national, and international level. The actors can have different responsibilities and different organisational aims. Some actors have access to common information systems and some do not.


mailto:[email protected]


One important issue for successful crisis management is how a decision maker can get the best possible information at the time he needs it from the various available sources, and how the different actors can get a common operational picture.

In order to give useful design suggestions, we need to learn more about the actors, how crisis management works, the context in which the actors are working, and how current technical systems look like.

We have begun the work of investigating the issues mentioned in the previous paragraph in several ways. Firstly we are planning a series of case studies. The case studies are important since what in reality happens during a crisis does not always correspond well to existing plans. The case studies have also been a way to get an overview of how crisis management is organised. We have planned to do six case studies, three in Sweden, and three in other countries. We want to select cases that have different characteristics so that the findings are not too bound to a specific type of crises. For example, a good choice of cases would contain crises from the following areas:

• Nature or environment, like flooding.

• Accidents or human caused incidents, like traffic accidents with hazardous goods or some fires.

• Terrorism, or other events caused by someone disturbing important society functions on purpose.

The cases will be studied by reading available reports, media coverage, and, where possible, interviews. Other methods will of course be considered depending on the situation and existing information sources.

Up till now we have done two case studies in Sweden, an outbreak of infectious decease 2008 in Lilla Edet, and a flooding in Mölndal in 2006. Since these cases cover a smaller geographic area, we are looking for a case that has affected an area of several municipalities. For the international cases we are right now looking at the Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and would like to balance this with some smaller international cases.

In addition to case studies, I am doing literature studies about significant topics such as situation awareness, visualisation and naturalistic decision making. I am also learning about crisis management by attending courses, seminars, and by looking at existing systems.

Currently I am working on two different things. I am writing on a paper about how information is collected and shared during a crisis, and I am preparing a first sketch or prototype for a possible how a system, to be use as a basis for further discussion.

The end result after this project is finished is planned to be a design suggestion for a crisis management system. We will not build a complete system in the project, but the result should contain guidelines and design models that can be used by the industry to develop the system. The main basis of the design proposal will be the knowledge we have collected during the project about how information is handled and shared during a crisis.

We want our proposed system to contribute to a common operational picture among crisis management actors. The system should work in different stages, that is, before, during, and



after a crisis. To be efficient, it is necessary that the system can be used not only in the middle of a crisis, but also during normal conditions. It should be possible to use the system in different kind of crises, such as the three areas mentioned earlier: Nature disasters, accidents, and deliberate sabotage of society functions.

The main responsible for the project is me, Anna Gryszkiewicz guided by my supervisor Fang Chen. For sub-studies in the project we collaborate in different ways with other researchers in crisis management in Sweden. There are also students writing their master thesis as a part of the project.

To sum up this research statement, we are using our background in Interaction Design to study crisis management organisation, information flow, and decision making in order to present a design suggestion that helps the different actors to get a common operational picture during crisis management.

PERSONAL STATEMENT

Participating in ISCRAM’s doctorial colloquium is most likely beneficial in many different ways. Generally speaking, I hope to develop and improve both my current research skills and my ideas for the research project I am working in.

Meeting other doctoral students that are working in the same field that I am would be an important part of attending the colloquium, since the colleagues at my department are mostly working in areas that are not related to crisis management research. The social aspect of meeting PhD students that are experiencing similar problems that I do in their daily research work is maybe one of the most important aspects of a meeting like this. As a smaller side effect, I can maybe get organisation ideas for the small yearly conference of my research school that I am helping to arrange this year.

I am still in my first year as a doctoral student, but I look forward to share the experience that I currently have. I can gladly contribute with a Swedish perspective, both on research in general and on crisis management. Much of my time so far has been spent on getting to know the Swedish crisis management organisation and how it works. Before I started my PhD studies, I was working in the industry in different areas but mostly with technical communication, and this experience could also add perspective in discussions.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Current Work

PhD student at Chalmers University of Technology.

Started in April 2008. The PhD project is a part of a Security Arena project ”Research into methods and systems for robust and secure crisis management”.

Education

2008-, doctoral studies, Chalmers University of Technology




2004, Master of Science in Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology

Previous Work

2007-2008, Technical Communicator Semcon Caran, Lund - Sweden

2005-2007, System Developer, Admera Software, Växjö - Sweden

Previous working experience: Translating, and software development.

Publications

None published yet. First paper was sent to ISCRAM 2009 but not accepted at this time.

Teaching

Human computer Interaction, assisting in laboratory sessions, 2008 and 2009.

Human centered Design, assisting, 2008.

Liu Crisis-Related Grassroots Heritage


Informing Design of Next Generation Social Media to Support Crisis-Related Grassroots Heritage

Sophia B. Liu ConnectivIT Lab

Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society (ATLAS) Institute University of Colorado at Boulder

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

When a crisis occurs, members of the public often attempt to document, make sense of, and share crisis-related memories through social media. This research explores how social media technology has the potential to support new kinds of heritage practices at the grassroots level by being both the tools and the sites for facilitating heritage production and sharing among the public, what I term “grassroots heritage.” I intend to investigate how the notion of heritage is changing in an age of social media technology that facilitates a participatory culture. I also will examine how public-generated information around crises can be transformed into knowledge that has long-term value for the benefit of present and future generations. I will use a technology design method that I call “web-based probes” to generate design proposals that will inspire and inform the design of next generation social media tools. These tools will support socially distributed curation of public-generated content around crises as well as support social action to strengthen community resilience to crises. The dissertation will focus on extensively documenting the design process and justifying the design choices in the proposals using two design strategies: design rigor/praxis and reflective design. My key research contributions are to present design proposals of social media tools that are aesthetically functional, to explain the social and cultural implications of these designs, and to open up new spaces for design that will inform next generation social media tools for supporting crisis-related grassroots heritage practices.

INTRODUCTION

With the pervasiveness of information and communication technology (ICT) and particularly social media technology, the public’s self-organizing activities are becoming more accessible and visible. Social media such as blogs, wikis, social networking sites, and media sharing sites are increasingly being used as tools for mobilizing crisis-related communication and collaboration. Such activities are playing a critical role in emergency preparation, warning, response and recovery efforts (Palen and Liu, 2007; Palen et al., 2007; Hughes et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2008; Vieweg et al., 2008). Members of the public are actively participating online by not only searching for relevant information but also providing and organizing information related to the event to help affected communities from across geographical boundaries (Palen and Liu, 2007). At the same time, members of the public are increasingly documenting and preserving these crisis-related activities through social media.



The social practice of annotating, organizing, and sharing public-generated content using the tools within social media sites are similar to traditional curatorial practices of collecting, preserving, and interpreting artifacts but through self-organization, what I call “socially distributed curation.” In the report called Our Cultural Commonwealth by the American Council of Learned Societies (2006), they predict the need for “tools that support and enable discovery, visualization, and analysis of patterns; tools that facilitate collaboration; [and] an infrastructure for authorship that supports remixing, recontextualization, and commentary—in sum, tools that turn access into insight and interpretation” (p. 16). Such tools are akin to facilitating curatorial practices but emphasize more community engagement. Emergent practices around social tagging, commenting, and ad hoc group formation within social media sites are examples of curatorial practices, but they occur in a more socially distributed way. This research explores how social media technologies have the potential to support new kinds of heritage practices at the grassroots level.

With advancements in social media technologies, there is a growing practice of using these technologies to document and share crisis-related histories online in new ways through digital archives and online forums within virtual communities, what I call “grassroots heritage.” Members of the public openly and collectively participate, document, and learn how to mitigate, manage, and recover from crises by sharing crisis-related memories through social media. The desire to document and share one’s memories with the wider public has always existed, but it is becoming more spontaneous and ubiquitous due to the pervasiveness of social media. A major crisis with community-wide effects typically creates a shared history among members of the public, and social media often become the communication tools for making sense of this shared history in new ways.

Currently, most crisis-related archives only support two forms of interactions: contributing a story and browsing the collections. Although this shifts the collection of artifacts from a top-down manner (by a curator) to a bottom-up approach (by the public), there are no tools available within these archives that allow people to actively interpret, discuss, and “remix” their contents in socially distributed ways. As such, the goal of this research is to generate proposals for technology designers who are interested in developing next generation social media tools that support crisis-related heritage practices. These tools will facilitate two types of grassroots heritage practices: socially distributed curation of crisis-related memories (e.g., collecting, organizing, interpreting, and representing artifacts) and social action that strengthens community resilience to crises (e.g., facilitating volunteer efforts, donations, community events). This research examines how we might support these practices in the long-term, possibly five years from now or even fifty years from now.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following research questions guide this technology design study:

How is the notion of heritage changing in an age of social media technology that is facilitating a participatory culture?

How can public-generated information around crises be transformed into knowledge that has long-term value?

How should we design next generation social media tools that facilitate socially distributed curation of crisis-related heritage practices in a way that supports insight, interpretation, and social action?



RESEARCH DESIGN

This research uses the probes method from the technology design literature. According to Gaver et al. (2004), “probology” is “an approach that uses Probes to encourage subjective engagement, empathic interpretation, and pervasive sense of uncertainty as positive values for design” (p. 56). Typically, probes are inspirational tools (Gaver et al., 1999) as opposed to analytical tools to inform or inspire design ideas. Participants are given tools to self-document, reflect on, and express their thoughts about issues related to the research in real-world settings. The probes become change agents allowing the participants’ self-reflection and the introduction of new technologies to inspire social action and cultural change in their own lives. They also help designers “prioritize, reconsider and address the topics and issues that are somewhat meaningful and of real importance to the participants” (Lucero et al., 2007, p. 389). Mattelmäki (2006) also finds that the exploratory character of probes helps to gather information to “frame the design space,” to “facilitate dialogue between designers and potential users,” and to “amplify design inspirations” from these participants based on their expressed ideas and needs.

For this research, I will design “web-based probes” containing a collection of open-ended questions and tasks with web-based tools to evoke design ideas from participants. The participants in my research study can be categorized as people who have produced crisis-related artifacts using social media, who exhibit socially distributed curation activities using social media, who are a part of social action-oriented initiatives relating to cultural heritage, and people in the Y or Net Generation who preserve ancient traditions using social media.

In 2008, I conducted a survey of existing web-based tools that exhibited significant crisis-related activities among members of the public and tools that illustrated innovative ways of visualizing and organizing information. I also surveyed websites that incorporated a long-term heritage perspective for incorporating social media into their projects. These are the types of tools and sites that I will use as part of the tasks in the probes. These probes will be specifically designed for each participant based on their skills, the constellation of social media technologies they use, and the amount of participation they can offer.

For each probe, I will ask participants to try out and use certain web-based tools and social media sites depending on the type of design ideas I want to extract from my participants. For example, I will use social media sites like Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. For participants who have previously shared crisis-related memories, I will use content from crisis-related archives (e.g., September 11 Digital Archive, Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, crisis-related Flickr groups). I will also use other web tools and sites that support different types of curatorial practices like searching (e.g., Viewzi and oSkope) and annotating (e.g., Skitch and Cozimo) as well as collaborative collection building, remixing of content, and the creation of multimedia collages (e.g., YouBundle and Flowgram). The goal of the web-based probes approach is to obtain “design artifacts” produced by the participants that will be used to inspire design ideas and inform the design proposals.

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS

This is an interdisciplinary, design-oriented research project that will inform the multidisciplinary domains of crisis informatics (Palen, 2009), cultural informatics, and creative technology design. This research will offer a new design method called the web-based probes technique detailing the use of web-based tools to inform and inspire the design of next generation social media tools. I will also produce design proposals to guide future



developments of social technologies that support crisis-related heritage practices. Specifically, I will present design ideas for tools that facilitate socially distributed curation and social action towards community resilience to crises.

The dissertation will focus primarily on detailing the design process and justifying the design choices in the proposals. Often in the human-computer interaction and other related research communities, there is a “tendency to communicate and present design research only in its final state” by focusing on the finishing prototype (Wolf et al., 2006, p. 524). Boehner et al. (2007) also are concerned that researchers who adapt the probes technique often do not detail the rich process around the development of the probes and the design proposals. Therefore, this research will extensively document the design process based on the following two design strategies: design rigor/praxis (Wolf et al., 2006) and reflective design (Sengers et al., 2005).

Drawing from the qualities of Wolf et al.’s (2006) design praxis, I will justify the design decisions and judgments presented in the design proposals by comprehensively documenting the creative design practice of web-based probes. I also will use Sengers et al.’s (2005) reflective design framework to more thoroughly reflect on the unconscious values embedded in crisis-related information systems in order to engage in more socially and culturally responsible technology design. Therefore, my research contributions are to present design proposals of social media tools that are aesthetically functional, to explain the social and cultural implications of these designs, and to open up new spaces for design that will inform next generation social media tools for supporting crisis-related grassroots heritage practices.

ISCRAM PHD COLLOQUIUM

At the end of January 2009, I passed my dissertation proposal defense and recently received approval for my research from the Human Research Committee (HRC) starting March 2009. Therefore, attending the ISCRAM PhD Colloquium would give me the opportunity to present some preliminary findings from this dissertation research. I am interested in receiving feedback about my research design using technology design methods. I expect my key contribution to the colloquium will be presenting a new technology design method—web-based probes—and explaining how this technique can inform and inspire the design of crisis-related information systems to support early participant engagement with the design process.

Specifically, I plan to share some of the participants’ design artifacts that result from the probe technique and would like feedback on how to organize and present them in the design proposals, possibly using a content management system. I also want to learn more about other publication venues and some potential career opportunities that relate to this research, such as in the area of crisis informatics, cultural informatics, or technology design. Lastly, I am interested in expanding my research network and meeting other graduate students and research professionals who are a part of the ISCRAM community to become more informed about how to manage the issues that arise during the doctoral process and how to prepare for career opportunities after completing my doctoral program.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Professor Leysia Palen for advising me during my doctoral studies. This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation: NSF Graduate Fellowship awarded to Sophia B. Liu and NSF CAREER Grant IIS-0546315 awarded to Professor Palen. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.



REFERENCES

1. American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Commission. (2006) Our Cultural Commonwealth: The Report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, New York: American Council of Learned Societies.

2. Boehner, K., Vertesi, J., Sengers, P., and Dourish, P. (2007) How HCI Interprets the Probes, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI '07, San Jose, California, USA, ACM, New York, NY, 1077-1086.

3. Gaver, B., Dunne, T., and Pacenti, E. (1999) Design: Cultural Probes, Interactions, 6, 1, January, 21-29.

4. Gaver, W. W., Boucher, A., Pennington, S., and Walker, B. (2004) Cultural Probes and the Value of Uncertainty, Interactions, 11, 5, September, 53-56.

5. Hughes, A. L, Palen, L., Sutton, J., Liu, S. B. and Vieweg, S. (2008) “Site-Seeing” in Disaster: An Examination of On-Line Social Convergence, Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference, Washington, DC, 324-333.

6. Liu, S. B., Palen, L., Sutton, J., Hughes, A. L. and Vieweg, S. (2008) In Search of the Bigger Picture: The Emergent Role of On-Line Photo Sharing in Times of Disaster, Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference, Washington, DC, 140-149.

7. Lucero, A., Lashina, T., Diederiks, E., and Mattelmäki, T. (2007) How Probes Inform and Influence the Design Process, Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces DPPI '07, Helsinki, Finland, 377-391.

8. Mattelmäki, T. (2006) Design Probes, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland.

9. Palen, L. (2009) Keeping Up with the Future of Human-Computer Interaction: The Many Masters of Scholarship, Social Action Work & Rapid Technological Change, Extended Abstract in submission to the Human Computer Interaction Consortium, Feb 2009.

10. Palen, L. and Liu, S. B. (2007) Citizen Communications in Disaster: Anticipating a Future of ICT-supported Public Participation, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI ‘07, 727-736.

11. Palen, L., Vieweg, S., Sutton, J., Liu, S. B. and Hughes, A. (2007) Crisis Informatics: Studying Crisis in a Networked World, Third International Conference on e-Social Science, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

12. Sengers, P., Boehner, K., David, S., and Kaye, J. (2005) Reflective Design, Proceedings of the 4th Decennial Conference on Critical Computing: between Sense and Sensibility CC ’05, Aarhus, Denmark, 49-58.

13. Vieweg, S., Palen, L., Liu, S. B., Hughes, A. L. and Sutton, J. (2008) Collective Intelligence in Disaster: Examination of the Phenomenon in the Aftermath of the 2007 Virginia Tech Shootings, Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference, Washington, DC, 44-54.

14. Wolf, T. V., Rode, J. A., Sussman, J., and Kellogg, W. A. (2006) Dispelling “Design” as the Black Art of CHI, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI ’06, Montréal, Canada, 521-530.

Sophia B. Liu

ATLAS Building 223

320 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0320 Cell: 630-729-4216

E-mail: [email protected] EDUCATION University of Colorado at Boulder (Fall 2005 – present) PhD Candidate: Technology, Media and Society interdisciplinary program at

the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society (ATLAS) Institute Graduate Advisor: Assistant Professor Leysia Palen in the Department of Computer Science

ISCRAM-TIEMS Summer School (June 14 - 22, 2006)

Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) – The International Emergency Management Society (TIEMS) Summer School at Tilburg University in the Netherlands

University of California, Irvine (September 2000 – September 2004) B.A.: Social Science specializing in Research and Analytical Methods – Honors

Two Minors: Information and Computer Science; Digital Arts University of Sussex, England (September 2003 – June 2004) Education Abroad Program for one academic year in my senior year

AWARDS AND HONORS

University of Colorado at Boulder National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship awarded in 2006

ISCRAM 2008 Conference Received the Mike Meleshkin award for best PhD student paper awarded to three of us students in

the Crisis Informatics ConnectivIT Lab for the three papers accepted to the ISCRAM 2008 conference

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE University of Colorado, Boulder (Fall 2005 – Spring 2007) Research Assistant for Prof Kathleen Tierney and Prof Leysia Palen at the Natural Hazards Center IBM Almaden Research Center (Summer 2005) Summer internship with John Tang, collaborating with Michael Muller and Tom Moran University of California, Irvine (Summer 2003)

Research Assistant for Prof Paul Dourish at the School of Information and Computer Sciences RESEARCH INTERESTS

Crisis informatics, new media, cultural heritage, social analysis of information technology; human-computer interaction (HCI), computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), creative technology design, cultural probes, social and cultural implications of technology design, web mashups, participatory mapping, media sharing, crisis-related grassroots heritage

RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS Palen, Leysia and Sophia B. Liu (2007). Citizen Communications in Crisis: Anticipating a Future of ICT-Supported Participation. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2007, 727-736. Palen, Leysia, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, and Sophia B. Liu (2007). Online Forums Supporting Grassroots Participation in Emergency Preparedness and Response. Communications of the ACM, 50, 3, (March 2007): 54-58. Palen, Leysia, Sarah Vieweg, Jeannette Sutton, Sophia B. Liu and Amanda Hughes. (2007). Crisis Informatics: Studying Crisis in a Networked World. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on E-Social Science, Ann Arbor, MI, Oct 7-9, 2007. Liu, Sophia B., Leysia Palen, Jeannette Sutton, Amanda Hughes, and Sarah Vieweg. (2008). In Search of the Bigger Picture: The Emergent Role of On-Line Photo Sharing in Times of Disaster. Proceedings of the 5th Intl ISCRAM Conference – Washington, DC, USA, May 2008. Vieweg, Sarah, Leysia Palen, Sophia B. Liu, Amanda Hughes, Sarah Vieweg, and Jeannette Sutton. (2008). Collective Intelligence in Disaster: Examination of the Phenomenon in the Aftermath of the 2007 Virginia Tech Shootings. Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference, May 5-7, Washington, DC, 44-54. Hughes, Amanda L., Leysia Palen, Jeannette Sutton, Sophia B. Liu, and Sarah Vieweg. (2008). “Site-Seeing” in Disaster: An Examination of On-Line Social Convergence. Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference, May 5-7 2008, Washington, DC, 324-333. Liu, Sophia B., Leysia Palen, Jeannette Sutton, Amanda Hughes, and Sarah Vieweg. (forthcoming). Citizen Photojournalism During Crisis Events. In Allan, S. and Thorsen, E. (Eds), Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives. New York: Peter Lang. Palen, Leysia, Sarah Vieweg, Sophia B. Liu, Amanda Hughes, and Jeannette Sutton. (forthcoming). Crisis in a Networked World: Features of Computer-Mediated Communication in the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech Event. Social Science Computer Review (Special Issue on e-Social Science).

SERVICE ACTIVITIES

Reviewed conference papers for Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) Conference 2008 and 2009

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES AND PRESENTATIONS Colorado Celebration of Women in Computing 2008 Presented “On-Line Photo Sharing in Times of Disaster: Going from Study to Design”

ISCRAM-TIEMS Summer School 2006 Presented “Integrating ICT-Supported Public Communication and Participation for Crisis Response”

Natural Hazards Center at University of Colorado at Boulder Graduate research assistant for the Responding to Crises and Unexpected Events – Information Technology Research (RESCUE-ITR) project: an interdisciplinary effort that brings computer scientists, engineers, social scientists, and disaster science experts together to explore technological innovations during crisis response

Particularly focused on Emergent Multi-Organizational Networks (EMONs) in disaster response; information dissemination in extreme events, technology adoption issues, and privacy issues

Mentis Emotion and Information Sharing

PhD Colloquium of the 6th

International ISCRAM Conference – Gothenburg, Sweden, May 2009

Emotion in Information Sharing in Critical Environments

Helena M. Mentis

College of Information Sciences and Technology

The Pennsylvania State University

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

The following research begins to address the relationship between affect and information

sharing in order to inform the design of critical collaborative systems. Critical environments

have a number of special characteristics including time pressure, complex and ambiguous

problems, stress, and interruptions (Sucov, Shapiro, Jay, Suner, & Simon, 2001). The

consequences of these characteristics are that cognitive and physical skills can be

deleteriously affected and emotions are brought to the surface. Because affect influences both

individual and group behavior, the adoption of an emotional lens would be beneficial in

designing critical collaborative information systems that support processes such as

information sharing in these high stress environments. Through ethnographic observations of

affect and face-to-face information sharing in an emergency department I intend to determine

how affect plays a part in information sharing in as well as develop a corpus of affective

information conveyed during information sharing. Outcomes of this study could provide

considerations for affect in the design of critical collaborative systems as well as identify

further areas of research within the ISCRAM community.

RESEARCH STATEMENT

The importance of affect in cognition and collaboration is supported by numerous psychology

studies. For instance, mood (a long-term affective state) influences motivation by informing

someone when he/she has achieved his/her goals (Martin, Ward, Achee, Wyer, 1993) (i.e.

positive mood indicates the goal has been achieved and one can stop, negative mood

indicates the goal has not been achieved and one should persist). However, there are a

number of studies which show that affect also influences a group’s behavior. Emotional

contagion, the process of “catching” others’ emotions, occurs in groups (Hatfield, Hsee,

Costello, Weisman, Denney, 1995) and can lead to a group’s general affective tone (George,

1990). Positive homogenous group affective tone can improve group processes by increasing

cooperativeness which can in turn increase levels of group performance (Barsade, 2002). And

yet, there has been much less attention given to affect in the design of collaborative

information systems.

To begin to address this research gap, a contextualized study of emotion in information

sharing in a critical environment is advantageous. One example of a critical and information-

rich collaborative environment is a hospital’s emergency department. This 24-hour a day

operation engages multiple shifts of autonomous healthcare workers who must navigate this

complex and high pressure situation in a coordinated fashion with limited resources.

Communication failures and specifically information sharing failures are the primary reason

for a large number of mishandled patient transfers and medical errors (Wittenbaum,




Hollingshead, Botero, 2004). Due to the high rate of medical errors in the ED, hospitals are

beginning to push for the integration of electronic patient records and other information

systems in order to increase efficiency (i.e. lower costs) and increase safety (i.e. lower

deaths). However, there have been a number of problems noted with this move to the

paperless hospital (Ash, Berg, Coiera, 2004) – primarily due to the lack of understanding how

personnel realistically coordinate and communicate in the ED. A more complete

understanding of the role of affect in information sharing in this particular critical

environment can improve the design of these essential electronic information sharing

mediums.

Thus, for this research, I will answer the following research questions:

1. How does affect play a part in information sharing in an emergency department?

2. What affective information is conveyed during information sharing in an emergency

department?

Studying Affect in Collaborative Information Sharing

In studying affect in group information sharing I am guided by the interactional approach put

forth by Boehner, DePaula, Dourish, & Sengers (2007) for conceptualizing and studying

affect. In this approach emotions are not “internal, individual, and private phenomenon” but

rather are a “witnessable property of social action, a way in which actions are rendered

interpretable and meaningful (p.280)”. Thus, merely viewing emotions as measurable

biological and finite facts precludes us from gathering a rich view of emotional experiences.

The interactional approach is more in line with sociological and anthropological studies of

emotion rather than the prevailing cognitive science studies which have dominated the affect

in human-computer interaction literature. It encourages the use of methods that capture the

“complex expression of the experience of emotion (p. 285)” such as observations and

interviews.

Thus, for this study, I am conducting an ethnography to delve into the relationship between

affect and information sharing. For the ethnography I am utilizing the specific techniques of

observation, informal interviews, and formal interviews.

Data Collection

This study is being conducted at a large level 1 trauma hospital in the center of a major U.S.

metropolitan area. It is an academic medical center that is a major receiving site for police

and fire rescue patients; it also services a large number of walk-in patients from the general

population. This ED has not fully integrated the use of information technology; for instance,

it maintains paper patient records for both nurses and doctors to document patient

information and orders. In addition, a substantial amount of information needed to redirect

patient care is relayed in face-to-face sessions.

Thus far, I observed the ED personnel discussing patient care during formal shift changes, as

well as ongoing informal information sharing and decision making episodes (see figure 1 for

reference of environment). I noted all episodes of information sharing that appeared to

include an instance of affect. For instance, a nurse might share with the nurse assistant her

feelings about a patient they are discussing. In addition, I recorded my interpretation

concerning the outcome of the affective information-sharing episode. In the above example,




the interpreted outcome is that the nurse assistant is now aware of the nurse’s feelings toward

the patient for whom they are coordinating care. At times, informal interviews after

information sharing episodes were used to clarify the information that was shared, affect felt,

or the intention of the participants.

Figure 1: Layout of ED Personnel Stations. Stars indicate location of researcher during observations.

Preliminary Data Findings on Affect and Information Sharing Outcomes

One of my research questions is how affect plays a part in information sharing. Preliminary

findings show that affect contributes to both awareness outcomes and shared mental model

development.

One type of awareness observed is ‘awareness of a patient’s state’. For example, before a

resident attended to a new patient, the nurse explains to him that the female patient just lost

her 18 year old daughter two weeks ago due to an unknown ectopic pregnancy bursting. She

describes the patient as lifeless and depressed, not suicidal, but very down. The nurse says

this in a very concerned voice that conveys sympathy and a sense of understanding, as the

resident flips through the chart. After hearing what the nurse has to say, the resident seems

confused. The nurse tells him “It's not in there, it just says chest pain, but I thought you

should know. She came in for chest pain but while I was in there I learned about this other

situation.” In this interchange, the nurse relates information to the resident to enhance his

awareness of the patient’s situation. She does this partly so that the resident can think whether

this may be a cause of the symptoms, but also to guide the resident’s behavior, i.e. treat the

patient with empathy.

Another example of how affect influenced information sharing outcomes is the creation of a

shared mental model. Shared mental models enable collaborators to agree on the direction of

care and work independently toward these shared goals. Affect helps to inform these mental

models.

<An attending turns to a nurse going to see a patient>

Dr. with sarcasm: “He is working up a storm in there.”

<pauses as Dr. makes ‘boohoo’ nonverbal motion.>

Nurse: “yeah” with a slow nod.

Dr. in back-to-business tone: “I may keep him off oxygen to document the O2 not dropping or

I may just discharge him…”.

In this exchange, the physician expresses to the nurse her annoyance with the patient as well




as her belief that he is faking. The physician is expressing this information so the nurse will

understand why the physician is not going to follow a typical protocol of care and instead try

to move the patient out of the ED, thereby freeing up the bed for a more serious case. Thus,

the standard of care that she proposes at the end of the exchange does not come from medical

reasoning but rather ideas about how to ‘deal with the patient’.

Expected Contributions

These findings provide initial insight into the relationship between affect and information

sharing. Further data collection and analysis is underway to explore these trends as well as to

discover new relationships. The study proposed here has the goal to provide guidance on how

designers can understand and meet the requirements of affect in the design of software

systems that support critical information sharing. In so doing, the contextualized vignettes

provide examples of trends found within a specific context. These vignettes will provide

grounding and implicit information for design practitioners to integrate into their own

requirements. In addition, the trends will lend support to existing knowledge of affect in work

as well as support design researchers in uncovering new areas of research within affect and

collaborative systems.

REFERENCES

1. Ash, J. S., Berg, M., & Coiera, E. (2004). Some unintendended consequences of

information technology in health care: the nature of patient care information system-

related errors. JAMIA, 11(1), 104-112.

2. Barsade, S. (2002). The ripple effect: Emotional contagion and its influence on group

behavior. ASQ, 47(4), 644-675.

3. Boehner, K., DePaula, R., Dourish, P., & Sengers, P. (2007). How emotion is made and

measured. IJHCS, 65(4), 275-291.

4. George, J. M. (1990). Personality, affect, and behavior in groups. J. of App. Psych., 75(2),

107-116.

5. Hatfield, E., Hsee, C. K., Costello, J., Weisman, M. S., & Denney, C. (1995). The impact

of vocal feedback on emotional experience and expression. Journal of Social Behavior

and Personality, 10(2), 293-312.

6. Martin, L. L., Ward, D. W., Achee, J. W., & Wyer, R. S. (1993). Mood as input: People

have to interpret the motivational implications of their moods. Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology, 64, 317-326.

7. Sucov, A., Shapiro, M. J., Jay, G., Suner, S., & Simon, R. (2001). Anonymous error

reporting as an adjunct to traditional incident reporting improves error detection.

Academic Emergency Medicine.

8. Wittenbaum, G. M., Hollingshead, A. B., & Botero, I. C. (2004). From cooperative to

motivated information sharing in groups: Moving beyond the hidden profile. Comm.

Monographs, 71(3), 286-310.




CONTRIBUTION TO COLLOQUIUM

My primary motivation for attending the ISCRAM PhD Colloquium is to gather feedback on

my research approach and its contribution to ISCRAM from the panel of distinguished

researchers on the committee. In addition, I see the colloquium as an opportunity to learn

from other senior graduate students’ research, backgrounds, and perspectives. These up-and-

coming researchers have fresh perspectives as to new areas of study within ISCRAM for

which I would like to gain knowledge. In repayment, I hope to be able to provide similar

useful feedback and inspiration to the other graduate students attending the colloquium. In

particular, I would introduce to them the concept of affect as an important research construct

– especially for the study of critical information systems.




CURRICULUM VITAE

Research Interest Investigating and designing collaborative information systems for socio-affective aspects of

critical collaborative work.

Education Doctor of Philosophy in Information Sciences and Technology, expected August 2009

The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

Master of Science in Communication, minor in Cognitive Studies, May 2004

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

Bachelor of Science in Psychology, Cognitive Psychology focus, May 2000

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA

Experience Penn State University Computer Supported Collaboration and Learning Lab

2006-Present

Graduate Research Assistant, Mary Beth Rosson & John M. Carroll

Lockheed Martin

2003-Present

Systems Engineer, Human Centered Systems

Cornell Human Computer Interaction Lab

2001-2006

Graduate Student, Geri Gay & Phoebe Sengers

Philips Research

2001

Researcher, Media Interaction Group, Cognitive Engineering Cluster

Cognetics Corporation

1999

Junior Designer

Virginia Tech Human Computer Interaction Lab

1999-2000

Undergraduate Research Assistant, H. Rex Hartson & Mary Beth Rosson

Virginia Tech Neurocognitive Lab

1999-2000

Undergraduate Research Assistant, Helen J. Crawford

Publications & Presentations

Refereed Conference Publications

Hoffman, B., Convertino, G., Mentis, H.M, & Carroll, J.M. (submitted). Annotation

Browser for Map-based Collaborative Planning. In the Proceedings of the Group

Conference, Sanibel Island, Florida, (pp. xxxx), New York: ACM.

Mentis, H.M., Hoffman, B., Bach, P., Rosson, M.B., Carroll, J.M. (2009). Development

of Decision Rationale in Complex Group Decision Making. In the Proceedings of the

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Boston, Massachusetts.

(pp. xxxx), New York: ACM.

Convertino, G., Mentis, H. M., Rosson, M. B., Slavkovic, A., & Carroll, J.M. (2009).

Supporting Content and Process Common Ground in Computer-Supported Teamwork.




In the Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI),

Boston, Massachusetts. (pp. xxxx), New York: ACM.

Convertino, G., Mentis, H. M., Bhambare, P., Ferro, C., Carroll, J. M., Rosson, M. B.

(2008). Comparing Media in Emergency Planning. In the Proceedings of the 5th

International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management

(ISCRAM), Washington, DC.,

Convertino, G., Mentis, H. M., Rosson, M. B., Carroll, J. M., Slavkovic, A., & Ganoe,

C. (2008). Articulating common ground in cooperative work: Content and process. In

the Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI),

Florence, Italy. (pp. 1637-1646), New York: ACM.

Convertino, G., Mentis, H. M., Carroll, J.M., Rosson, M. B. (2007). How does common

ground increase? In the Proceedings of the Group Conference, Sanibel Island, Florida,

(pp. 225-228), New York: ACM.

Carroll, J. M., Mentis, H. M., Convertino, G., Rosson, M. B., Ganoe, C. H., Sinha, H.,

& Zhao, D. (2007). Prototyping collaborative geospatial emergency planning. In the

Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis

Response and Management (ISCRAM), Delft, the Netherlands.

Foucault, B., Mentis, H. M., Sengers, P., & Welles, D. (2007). Provoking Sociability.

In the Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI),

San Jose, Ca., (pp. 1557-1560), New York: ACM.

Mentis, H. M. & Gay, G. K. (2003). User recalled occurrences of usability errors:

Implications on the user experience. In the Extended Abstracts of the Conference on

Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Ft. Lauderdale, Fl. (pp. 736-737), New

York: ACM.

Refereed Conference Posters

Mentis, H.M. & Rosson, M.B (2009). “It’s Like a Circus in Here!” Affect and

Information Sharing in an Emergency Department. In the Extended Abstracts of the

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Boston, MA, (pp. xxxx),

New York: ACM.

Convertino, G., Mentis, H., Ting, A., Ferro, C., Carroll, J. M. (2007). Measuring

common ground in geo-collaboration. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference

on Human-Computer Interaction (HCII), Beijing, China.

Lacava, D. & Mentis, H. M. (2005). Beginning design without a user: Application of

scenario-based design. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-

Computer Interaction (HCII), Las Vegas, NV.

Mentis, H. M. & Gay, G. K. (2002). Using touchPad pressure to detect negative affect.

Proceedings of the IEEE 4th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces,

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Book Chapters

Carroll, J. M., Rosson, M. B., Bach, P. M., Convertino, G., Farooq, U., Mentis, H. M.,

Xiao, L., Burge, J., Jiang, H., Ganoe, C. H., Borge, M. (submitted). Activity awareness

and complex teamwork. In Columbus, F. (Ed.), Teamwork in Management, Medical

Care and Manufacturing, pp. xxx-xxx, Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.




Mentis, H. M. (2007). Memory of frustrating experiences. In D. Nahl & D. Bilal (Eds.)

Information and Emotion. Medford, NJ: Information Today.

Carroll, J. M. & Mentis, H. M. (2007). The useful interface experience: The role and

transformation of usability. In H. N. J. Schifferstein & P. Hekkert (Eds.) Product

Experience. San Diego, CA: Elsevier.

Workshops

Mentis, H. (2008). Ethnographic methods for studying emotions in group contexts.

Presented at the CHI 2008 Workshop on Measuring Affect in HCI: Going Beyond the

Individual.

Peters, M., Mentis, H., Haynes, S., Saab, D., & Durrant, A. (2007). Exploring design as

a research activity. In Extended Abstracts of the Conference on Human Factors in

Computing Systems, San Jose, Ca., (pp. 2861-2864), New York:ACM.

Hoffman, B., Mentis, H., Peters, M., Saab, D., Schweitzer, S., & Spielvogel, J. (2006).

Exploring design as a research activity. In Proceedings of the 5th ACM conference on

Designing Interactive Systems, University Park, Pa., (pp. 365-366), New York: ACM.

Mentis, H. M. (2005). Insight into strong emotional experiences through memory.

Presented at the CHI 2005 Workshop on Evaluating Affective Interfaces.

Non-refereed Publications and Invited Talks

Mentis, H. M. & Hoeft, R. M. (2009). Where are we? One company’s collective

interpretation of HSI in the SE process. Proceedings of the 2009 Human Systems

Integration Symposium.

Hoeft, R. M. & Mentis, H. M. (2009). The Next Generation Warfighters = The Net

Generation: Implications for the Development and Implementation of Training

Technologies. Proceedings of the 2009 Human Systems Integration Symposium.

Devlin, R. C. & Mentis, H. M. (2005). Advanced tracking and correlation algorithms:

Applying GOTS algorithms in COTS systems. Proceedings of the Conference on

Working Together: R&D Partnerships in Homeland Security, Boston, Ma.

Mentis, H. (2004). Invited Talk for Cornell SIGCHI Distinguished Lectureship Series –

HCI in the Workplace, April 2004.

Quesenbery, W. & Mentis, H. (2000). A profile of technical communicators in

usability. Usability Interface, 6(3) January 2000.

Academic Awards Computer Supported Cooperative Work Doctoral Colloquium, 2008

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Honorable Mention, 2006

Cornell Cognitive Studies Summer Fellowship, 2003

Teaching Experience Usability Engineering, Penn State Senior Course, 2008

Guest Lecturer on “Expanding Usability”. Presented and led discussion on issues

presented in Carroll and Mentis’ (2007) The Useful Interface Experience, McCarthy and

Wright’s (2004) Technology as Experience, Norman’s (2004) Emotional Design, and

Carroll’s (2004) interactions article on Fun.




Introduction to Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State Fresh. Course, 2005/06

Teaching Assistant. Graded papers, provided guidance on group projects and led several

classes.

Discourse for Usability, Cornell Senior Course, Spring 2003

Teaching Assistant. Provided guidance in research projects and assisted in grading

papers.

Impact of Information Technology, Cornell Graduate Course, Spring 2003

Teaching Assistant. Guided students in the use of various usability methodologies for

group projects.

Psychology of Television and Beyond, Cornell Senior Course, Fall 2002

Teaching Assistant. Led discussion sections and provided guidance in research projects.

Computer-Mediated Communication, Cornell Senior Course, Spring 2002

Teaching Assistant. Co-designed and taught sections of course.

Human-Computer Interaction, Cornell Senior Course, Fall 2001

Teaching Assistant. Led discussion sections, provided guidance on group projects and

usability testing.

Service & Affiliations Service

CHI 2009 Committee, Associate Chair, Work-in-Progress Papers

CHI 2008 Committee, Communications Co-chair.

CHI 2007 Committee, Conference Chair’s Assistant.

Penn State SIGCHI Student Chapter, 2006-2007, Co-founder, Vice Chair, and Chair.

Women in Information Sciences and Technology Graduate Student Liaison, 2005-2007.

IST Graduate Theoretical Integration Course Quality Team, 2005.

Initiative to Improve Graduate Teaching Assistant Training, 2005-2006.

Philadelphia SIGCHI Chapter, 2004-2005, Resumed chapter, Secretary.

Cornell SIGCHI Student Chapter, 2002-2003, Co-founder, Chair.

Reviewing

IJHCS: 2008, 2009 Full Papers

ISCRAM: 2009 Full Papers

CHI: 2004-2008, Papers, Notes, Works-In-Progress, Workshops

CSCW: 2006, 2008, Papers

DUX: 2005, Papers

Cognitive Science Society: 2006, Papers

Affiliations

Association of Computing Machinery - ACM

ACM Special Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction - SIGCHI

Penn State University SIGCHI Chapter - PSUCHI

Philadelphia Area SIGCHI Chapter - PhillyCHI

Other Skills and Activities Foreign Languages: Intermediate: Spanish, German Beginner: Greek, Latin

Research Skills: Quantitative and qualitative methods, survey design, neurological &

physiological testing

Design Practitioner Skills: Scenario-based design, wireframe prototyping, usability

analysis/testing

Programming Skills: C++, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, CSS

Mt. Nittany Medical Center Emergency Department Volunteer, December 2006-May 2008

EMT-B License, May 1997

Muhren Sensemaking Support Systems for Humanitarian Disaster Response


ISCRAM2009 PhD Colloquium Application: Sensemaking Support Systems for Humanitarian

Disaster Response

Willem J. Muhren Tilburg University [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Our research focuses on how IS can support humanitarian actors in making sense of their environment when they respond to disasters. With our research we contribute to the scarcely examined interconnection of information systems (IS) design, Sensemaking, and crisis management.

In the first phase of our research we conducted several exploratory case studies of how actors make sense in crises. We conducted interpretive, semi-structured interviews, asking questions related to the different Sensemaking properties as defined by Weick (1995). From these case studies we distinguished seven communication activities that actors use to make sense and reach an individual understanding of their crisis situation, and we derived implications for media support.

In the second, ongoing phase of our research we focus on the social aspect of Sensemaking, how groups of people reach an understanding of a humanitarian crisis. We conducted participant observation at the humanitarian TRIPLEX exercise, in which we participated as information managers in the On-Site Operations Coordination Centre (OSOCC) of the United Nations, and were part of the Belgian First Aid and Support Team (B-FAST) that conducted rapid initial assessments of the disaster and the needs of the affected people. We were able to gain insights into how IS can support Sensemaking for the needs assessment by teams and between the information managers in the OSOCC and the assessment teams. Finally, future research will focus on a quantitative study of factors that influence group Sensemaking, such as specific IS design requirements, by conducting survey research and/or an experiment.

MY EXPECTATIONS OF THE PHD COLLOQUIUM

At the time of the PhD Colloquium we expect to present our research model and concrete research plans for our quantitative data collection on IS requirements for group Sensemaking in humanitarian disaster response. The PhD Colloquium is beneficial for our research since both fellow PhD students and researchers from the ISCRAM field can give us valuable advice on how we can continue our research in this final stage. Moreover, I look forward to getting advice from faculty members on completing the PhD, finding and hitting the right publication targets, and possible career development strategies.

I can contribute to the PhD Colloquium and the ISCRAM field by sharing our research experiences, as we were fortunate to visit the field and conduct several case studies in different crisis situations. I could contribute to the discussions that arise and give feedback on the research by fellow PhD students.



RESEARCH STATEMENT

Natural disasters or complex emergencies often result in humanitarian disasters. The crisis environments in which humanitarian organizations work are characterized by ambiguity and equivocality, and various types of information problems complicate their work (Van de Walle and Turoff, 2007; Van de Walle et al., 2009). This poses difficulties for humanitarian actors in making sense of what is going on and taking appropriate action. Our goal is to find out how information systems (IS) can support humanitarian actors in making sense of their environment.

Interesting and substantial research exists on Sensemaking and crisis situations (e.g. Weick, 1993), but relatively few studies use Sensemaking as an analytical lens for the design of information technology (e.g. Weick and Meader, 1993) and even fewer apply these constructs in the field of crisis management (Landgren, 2005 is a notable exception). IS that support organizations in crisis situations should be designed according to how they process information. However, most IS currently seem to intend the opposite because they aim at replacing or suppressing the possibility to make sense of situations.

Sensemaking in crises

In order to find out how people in crisis situations handle and process information, we conducted four case studies (Muhren et al., 2008a) using an interpretive approach, interviewing people who are working in different crisis situations: humanitarian assistance in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), airplane crash rescue exercise by the countries around the Barents Sea, the yearly recurring Portuguese forest fires, and the European police mission in Bosnia. The interviews were semi-structured, in the sense that we knew which topics to touch upon and had a list of the general points we wanted to find out, but adjusted the questions to how the interview was evolving. Sensemaking played a double role in these case studies: We used Sensemaking as the object of our research and as a methodology.

Firstly, we used Weick’s (1995) Sensemaking constructs to understand and analyze how information is processed in crisis situations. Therefore, we investigated how the seven Sensemaking properties of identity construction, retrospection, enactment, social context, ongoing, cue extraction, and plausibility play a role in the information behavior of the actors in crisis situations.

Secondly, Sensemaking served as a methodology (Dervin, 1999) in order to extract data from our participants: As researchers we were interpreting how people make interpretations. We used a colorful and provocative interview style, using statements, metaphors, and dilemmas to find out how they process information. We mainly let our respondents do the talking by asking for examples, anecdotes, and calling upon their imagination. We also adjusted the questions to the respondents: Their language, their personality, their world view, and their experience.

This approach enabled us to gather rich data on how the actors handle, process, create, and use information in crisis situations (Muhren et al., 2008b; Muhren et al, 2008c).



Sensemaking communication activities and supporting media

Next, we placed the Sensemaking properties in a communication perspective, and found that actors engage in seven different Sensemaking communication activities depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Sensemaking communication activities

Noticing is the activity of how people sense what is ‘out there’. Our case study revealed that there are five types of interacting. First of all, our respondents interact to update their understanding of the situation; they actively consult their network and maintain their contacts to stay informed. The second reason for interaction is to inquire about specific things they want to know. Furthermore, our respondents engage in contact with other people to triangulate information and negotiate on what is going on. Actors also interact to verify information. Finally, our respondents indicated that they interact to reflect with colleagues on what to do and the decisions they need to make. The last Sensemaking communication activity is enacting, as actors enact the environments which constrain them.

We investigated the media characteristics (Dennis et al., 2008) needed to support these Sensemaking communication activities, and could distinguish between three types of media that humanitarian actors are in need of: “scanning media” to support noticing and updating (e.g. a Web 2.0 social networking application such as Facebook with additional options such as file exchange, voice-to-voice communication and interaction through webcams), “triangulating media” to enable actors to consult specific sources of information in real-time and in parallel to one another for information to be triangulated (e.g. a combined instant messaging and chat room application), and “one-to-one media” for inquiring, verifying, reflecting, and enacting (e.g. a telephone).

Group Sensemaking Support Systems

In our case studies on Sensemaking in crises, we noticed that the social context of people plays an important role in their Sensemaking activities. For example, in the DRC, the humanitarian actors would immediately contact their informal contacts within other organizations when a crisis occurred.



Lately, the notion of “group Sensemaking” or “collaborative Sensemaking” has come up which articulates the important role of the social context in Sensemaking. Nosek and McNeese (1997) define group Sensemaking as “the elicitation and creation of group knowledge relevant to an emerging situation.” We view group Sensemaking as a process that is broader than merely socially constructing meanings and generating a shared understanding amongst group members. As Weick (1995) explains, “Sensemaking is also social when people coordinate their actions on grounds other than shared meanings as when joint actions are coordinated by equivalent meanings, distributed meanings, overlapping views of ambiguous events, or nondisclosive intimacy” (Weick, 1995, p.42).

The next part of our research focuses on how the design of IS can support group Sensemaking processes in the context of humanitarian disaster response. We intend to combine work on the social context in Sensemaking and group Sensemaking to well-established literature on decision support systems (e.g. Van de Walle and Turoff, 2008) and group support systems (e.g. Turoff et al., 1993), and find out how the design of information systems can support group Sensemaking processes. For this purpose we have already conducted an exploratory case study of a crisis situation in which Sensemaking and group processes play an important role, and where Sensemaking is not yet sufficiently supported by IS: information management in the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team and the needs assessment process during the humanitarian TRIPLEX exercise.

UNDAC information management and the needs assessment process

The UNDAC system is designed to assist the United Nations in providing information during the first phase of a sudden-onset emergency and in the coordination of incoming international relief at the site of the emergency. In the immediate aftermath of such an emergency, the UNDAC team will set up an On-Site Operations Coordination Centre (OSOCC) from where the operational activities of the humanitarian organizations responding to the emergency are coordinated. Information management is a key aspect in this phase as the information gathering, processing, and disseminating activities will determine the timeliness and appropriateness of the response by the international humanitarian community. An important source of input of their information is provided by assessment teams. They are the ‘eyes on the ground’ and have to make sense of what is going on, and define the priority needs based on this assessment. Through participatory observation in the international humanitarian “TRIPLEX” exercise we explored how information managers in the OSOCC make sense of the disaster and how the immediate needs are assessed, as we could both participate as information managers in the OSOCC and were part of the Belgian First Aid and Support Team (B-FAST) that went into the disasters area to assess the impact of the disaster and the needs of the affected people.

In the TRIPLEX exercise we specifically focused on the group processes in the assessment teams and the interaction with the information managers in the OSOCC, and were able to gain insights into how IS can support these group Sensemaking processes. IS can support group Sensemaking by supporting the different Sensemaking properties as follows (Muhren and Van de Walle, 2009, Forthcoming; Weick, 1999):

• IS can support social resources by encouraging conversation; • IS can support defined identity by giving people a distinct, stable sense of who they are and

what they represent;



• IS can support backward noticing by preserving elapsed data and legitimate the use of those data;

• IS can support equivocal cues by enhancing the visibility of cues; • IS can support continuous flow of events by enabling people to be resilient in the face of

interruptions; • IS can support possibility as criterion for narratives by encouraging people to accumulate

and exchange plausible accounts; • IS can support enactive as form of action by encouraging action.

Future research

In the next phase of our research we will quantitatively study factors that influence group Sensemaking, such as specific IS design requirements. We are currently exploring the possibilities of conducting survey research and/or conducting an experiment. We will be able to present our concrete research plans at the PhD Colloquium.

REFERENCES

1. Dennis, A.R., Fuller, R.M. and Valacich, J.S. (2008) Media, Tasks, and Communication Processes: A Theory of Media Synchronicity, MIS Quarterly, 32, 3, 575-600.

2. Dervin, B. (1999) On studying information seeking methodologically: the implications of connecting metatheory to method, Information Processing and Management, 35, 6, 727-750.

3. Landgren, J. (2005) Supporting fire crew sensemaking enroute to incidents, International Journal of Emergency Management, 2, 3, 176-188.

4. Muhren, W.J., Jaarva, M.-M., Rintakoski, K. and Sundqvist, J. (2008a) Information sharing models and Interoperability in National, Cross-Border and International Crisis Management, Crisis Management Initiative, Helsinki.

5. Muhren, W.J. and Van de Walle, B. (2009, Forthcoming) Sensemaking and Information Management in Humanitarian Disaster Response: Observations from the TRIPLEX Exercise, in J. Landgren, U. Nulden and B. Van de Walle (Eds.) Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM2009), Gothenburg,

6. Muhren, W.J., Van Den Eede, G. and Van de Walle, B. (2008b) Sensemaking and Implications for Information Systems Design: Findings from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ongoing Crisis, Information Technology for Development, 14, 3, 197-212.

7. Muhren, W.J., Van Den Eede, G. and Van de Walle, B. (2008c) Sensemaking as a Methodology for ISCRAM Research: Information Processing in an Ongoing Crisis, in F. Fiedrich and B. Van de Walle (Eds.) Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM), Washington DC, 315-323.

8. Nosek, J.T. and McNeese, M.D. (1997) Augmenting group sense making in ill-defined, emerging situations: Experiences, lessons learned and issues for future development, Information Technology & People, 10, 3, 241-252.



9. Turoff, M., Hiltz, S.R., Bahgat, A.N.F. and Rana, A.R. (1993) Distributed group support systems, MIS Quarterly, 17, 4, 399-417.

10. Van de Walle, B. and Turoff, M. (2007) Emergency Response Information Systems: Emerging Trends and Technologies, Communications of the ACM, 50, 3, 29-31.

11. Van de Walle, B. and Turoff, M. (2008) Decision Support for Emergency Situations, in F. Burstein and C. Holsapple (Eds.) Handbook on Decision Support Systems, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 39–64.

12. Van de Walle, B., Van Den Eede, G. and Muhren, W.J. (2009) Humanitarian Information Management and Systems, in J. Löffler and M. Klann (Eds.) Mobile Response, Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, 12-21.

13. Weick, K.E. (1993) The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster, Administrative Science Quarterly, 38, 4, 628-652.

14. Weick, K.E. (1995) Sensemaking in Organizations, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.

15. Weick, K.E. (1999) Sensemaking as an Organizational Dimension of Global Change, in J. Dutton and D. Cooperrider (Eds.) The Human Dimensions of Global Change, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, 39-56.

16. Weick, K.E. and Meader, D.K. (1993) Sensemaking and Group Support Systems, in L. Jessup and J. Valacich (Eds.) Group Support Systems: New Perspectives, MacMillan, New York, 230-252.



CURRICULUM VITAE

Willem Muhren

Contact information

Tilburg University Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Information Systems and Management Department, office K-723 PO Box 90153 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands

Telephone: +31 (0)13 466 8721 (office), +31 (0)6 1423 1202 (mobile) E-mail: [email protected]

Personal data

Full name: MUHREN, Willem Johannes Date of birth: March 8th 1983 Place of birth: Leiderdorp, The Netherlands Sex: M Nationality: Dutch Languages: Dutch and English (fluent), German, Italian, and French (basic)

Education

August 2006 – present: PhD Candidate in Information Management (Tilburg University, The Netherlands)

My research focuses on information management and information systems in the humanitarian domain, specifically on how information systems can support Sensemaking processes of humanitarian disaster response actors.

September 2001 – June 2006: MSc in Information Management (Tilburg University, The Netherlands)

Publications

Journal articles

Van Den Eede, G., Muhren, W.J. and Van de Walle, B. (2009, Forthcoming) Organizational Learning for the Incident Management Process: Lessons from High Reliability Organizations, Journal of Information System Security (JISSec).

Muhren, W.J., Van Den Eede, G. and Van de Walle, B. (2008) Sensemaking and Implications for Information Systems Design: Findings from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ongoing Crisis, Information Technology for Development, 14, 3, 197-212.



Conference articles

Muhren, W.J. and Van de Walle, B. (2009, Forthcoming) Sensemaking and Information Management in Humanitarian Disaster Response: Observations from the TRIPLEX Exercise, in J. Landgren, U. Nulden and B. Van de Walle (Eds.) Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM2009), Gothenburg.

Muhren, W.J., Van Den Eede, G. and Van de Walle, B. (2008) Sensemaking as a Methodology for ISCRAM Research: Information Processing in an Ongoing Crisis, in F. Fiedrich and B. Van de Walle (Eds.) Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM2008), Washington DC, 315-323.

Van Den Eede, G., Muhren, W.J. and Van de Walle, B. (2008) Design for Complexity: IS Reliability seen from an Error Perspective, in B. Li and B. Van de Walle (Eds.) Proceedings of the 3rd International ISCRAM China Workshop, Harbin, 220-231.

Muhren, W.J., Van Den Eede, G. and Van de Walle, B. (2007) Organizational Learning for the Incident Management Process: Lessons from High Reliability Organizations, in H. Österle, J. Schelp and R. Winter (Eds.) Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS2007), St. Gallen, 576-587.

Van Den Eede, G., Muhren, W.J., Smals, R. and Van de Walle, B. (2006) Incident Response Information Systems Capability: The Role of the DERMIS Design Principles, in B. Van de Walle and B. Carlé (Eds.) Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM2006), Brussels, 251-261.

Book articles

Van de Walle, B., Van Den Eede, G. and Muhren, W.J. (2009) Humanitarian Information Management and Systems, in J. Löffler and M. Klann (Eds.) Mobile Response, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 5424, Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, 12-21.

Other publications

Muhren, W.J. (2008). Promotietraject: Informatiesystemen in Humanitaire Crises. .Ego, 7, 3 (June 2008), 41-43.

Muhren, W.J., Jaarva, M.-M., Rintakoski, K. and Sundqvist, J. (2008) Information sharing models and Interoperability in National, Cross-Border and International Crisis Management, Crisis Management Initiative, Helsinki.

Service activities

In progress: Co-session chair of the session on IT for Crisis Management in Africa at the 6th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) (Gothenburg, Sweden)



In progress: Session chair of the Poster Session at the 6th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) (Gothenburg, Sweden)

September 13-20 2008: Evaluator of the joint needs assessment process during the TRIPLEX exercise, organized by the International Humanitarian Partnership (IHP) (Norway/Sweden)

May 5-6 2008: Co-session chair of the session on Information Systems for Humanitarian Operations at the 5th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) (Washington DC, USA)

October 22-26 2007 : Notetaker at the working group on "Innovation to improve humanitarian action", held at the UN Global Symposium +5 on Information for Humanitarian Action (Geneva, Switzerland)

June 20-27 2007 : Co-organizer and participant of the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) summer school on “Global Disaster Risks and Humanitarian Assistance” (Tilburg, The Netherlands)

May 14-15 2007: Co-session chair of the session on Information Systems for Humanitarian Operations at the 4th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) (Delft, The Netherlands)

Sapateiro Situation Awareness in Critical Incident Management



Situation Awareness in Critical Incident Management

Cláudio Sapateiro

Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

This research is particularly focused on improving situation Awareness (SA) in critical

incident management situations trough the use of mobile devices. Mobile devices such as

PDA and Smart Phones enable real time information sharing (it is considered out of the scope

of this work connectivity issues, addressed in other research projects), situated information

analysis and reporting and an information persistency support (contrasting radio and phone

communications). Thus the proposed model of incident response aims to constitute a

framework for the development of mobile applications considering minimal work overhead

and cognitive load demands, trough simplistic but information rich interfaces.

The adopted methodology comprehends: a literature review of key contributive areas (e.g.

emergency response models, naturalistic decision making, high reliability organizations and

resilience engineering principles and team processes performance); a set of exploratory

experiments to proposed model tuning and validation and a simulation of developed

prototype usage.

The preliminary exploratory experiments were conducted with two IT service desk teams.

Incidents like services/applications, servers or network links down are to a number of

organizations addressed in an emergency like response, in order to assure business processes

continuity. The practices to overcome these incidents often rely in experience and tacit

knowledge of team members and the availability of a shared situation representation will be

deeply appreciated to improve response actions consistency.

ISCRAM 2009 PhD COLLOQUIUM EXPECTATIONS

By participating in ISCRAM 2009 PhD Colloquium, I intend to discuss the foundations of

the proposed model and obtain contributions for the research methodology. Since incidents

are unexpected and usually with high stakes involved, field research is quite challenging.

On the other hand, laboratory experiments/simulations hardly mimic the conditions faced on

real scenarios. As so, contributions regarding methodological issues will be deeply

appreciated.

I intend to contribute to the discussions on the ISCRAM 2009 PhD Colloquium with the deep

literature review that I conducted in a number of related research areas and the achieved

insights from the preliminary exploratory experiments conducted.




I expect from the ISCRAM 2009 PhD Colloquium a rich discussion regarding the

prepositions that my research hypothesis may unveil and the respective variables that the

evaluation should focus; again, the methodological way to conduct such variable analysis and

respective model evaluation is one of my primary concerns.

One may synthesize the research question as:

“How to improve emergency response teams shared situational awareness?”

For which the overall hypothesis studied will be:

“The mobile and persistent support to situated contributions of involved actors in emergency

response teams, enhance a common representation and understanding of the situation.”

RESEARCH STATEMENT

Emergency Response (ER) may be considered a complex dynamic process in which

constraints arise in real-time. The factors that contribute to complexity include: surprise,

speed of development, spatial extension, number of involved stakeholders, uncertainty,

perception gaps, lack of flexibility in decision-making, lack of available resources, lack of

response options, inability to communicate and cascading events (domino effect)(Wybo and

Latiers 2006). The existing ER models seem to provide few insights about the actual

unfolding of a disaster. They lack a real-time, persistent view of the interdependencies

between events and actions; and the situated adaptations of existing plans to the contingent

factors that arise in emergency situations. From this work standpoint, one need an

emergency-handling model capable to maintain in real-time the multiple interdependencies

between events, actions, actors, contexts, plans and any other factors involved in the process.

Thus, in order to be useful, an emergency-handling model should move beyond the

traditional phases approaches towards a more dynamic and complex organization of all the

elements that constitute the disastrous situation.

Several works have identified relevant emergency response dimensions and their respective

correlations. In (Wybo and Latiers 2006) is emphasize the socio-organizational (roles and

interactions) and spatial (locations) dimensions. Also, Jonas Landgren, in his PhD thesis

(Landgren 2007), based on 700 hours of ethnographic studies with fire-fighters, proposed the

Actors-Actions and Location-Situated Attributes dimensions. Other authors emphasized the

need to relate capacity vs vulnerability(Kieft and Nur 2001), actors vs recovery

actions(Yasemin and Davis 1993), risk sources vs risk elements (Salter 1997), Harzard

assessement vs risk and Risk vs actions (Nasghar, Alahakoon et al. 2005), and situation

inputs/resources vs impacts (Kelly 1998).

The proposed approach may be seen as a meta-model that may be instantiated in specific

application domain models according to the Situation Elements (SE) and Situation

Dimensions (SD) and respective correlations considered relevant to that domain.

In this work one, conceptualize the emergency response process as the management of

Situation Elements (SEs). A SE is a relevant (according to the application domain) element

involved in the emergency-response process, like an actor, action, goal, resource, situation

attribute.




A Situation Dimension (SD) is defined, to aggregate several SEs in a relevant set (again,

relevance depends on the specific application domain). We may consider, for instance, SDs

aggregating actors in specific teams, associating actions of a team, associating actions

according a goal, etc. Figure 1 illustrates this conceptualization.

In order to semantically relate the SDs, it is proposed the Situation Matrix (SM) artifact. A

SM is a tuple (SDi, SDj, SVij) in which the first two constituents are two SDs and the last

one, designated Semantics Vector (SVij), is a vector expressing the meaning of the

relationship between the SDi and SDj. If one considers, for instance, SM1, in figure 1, it sets

the relationship between the SD constituted by the operational team A and the SD defining

the actions assigned to that team. The semantic meaning associated to SM1 may define who

is responsible for an action; or who will be affected by an action. If we consider SM4, in

figure 1, it defines the relationship between a specific resource and an incident that occurred

in location A. Other possible semantic linkages between these SDs may consider where

resources are located and/or where they are needed. The semantic of the correlation between

SD constituents should be elicited in the specific domains of application, and may be

implemented recurring to icons and/or color schemas.

Figure 1. SE, SD and SM Conceptualization

Regarding the proposed model dynamics’, we shall consider that handling emergency

situations encompasses a number of information and communication flows (Landgren 2006;

Gonzalez 2008). The SM artifact performs a key role in mediating these flows, supporting

information sharing and persistence. Figure 2 depicts the flows involved in an emergency

response scenario.




Figure 2. Information flows

Taking a systems oriented approach, the involved participants may be regarded both as

sensors and as actuators in the emergency-management process. While acting as sensors, the

involved participants establish closed feedback loops by updating the SEs’ relationships

trough SMs. Monitoring the SEs’ dynamics affords accommodating to events, contingencies

and context changes. This constructivist perspective promotes the adaptation between

previously defined / trained plans (which deploy the initial set of SEs, SDs and SMs) and the

current emergency situation, by allowing the participants to progressively and collectively

contribute to characterize the situation and handling strategy. SMs will thus accomplish two

critical goals: support the externalization of often-embedded knowledge, and provide a

support for monitoring the patterns that may trigger contributions from the involved

participants.

The preliminary exploratory experiments yield that actual diagnosis and recovery practices

rely heavily on the operators’ field experience, which often dictates informal ad hoc measures

and temporary workarounds; which degraded the shared understanding of the situation.

The experiments comprehended a set of semi-structured interviews to domain experts and a

workshop. In the workshop the model instantiation in real scenario (scenario previously

elaborated with team s’ senior members) was discussed. This discussion was supported using

paper prototypes representing the SM artifact (Figure 3a). This allowed us to focus on the

model and avoid the typical usability disturbances often experienced with preliminary

evaluations recurring to technological implementations.

Figure 3. a. SM paper prototype b. PDA prototype

From the discussed scenario and paper prototypes, the following SDs were elcited:

Equipments, Actors, Locations, Actions and Activities. These SDs should be correlated in the

following SMs:




1. Actions-Steps, detailing operational activities (e.g., check router X, reboot switch Y);

2. Actors-Steps, defining responsibilities;

3. Equipment-Actors, expressing the persons responsible for the equipment (e.g., who is

empowered to activate a supplier warranty, who is habilitated to inspect a Linux

server or a specific service);

4. Equipments-Locations, allowing team members (mostly junior) to know the

equipment locations (e.g., main gateway of building C6 is located in room 6.3.0.1).

The participants additionally referred that the persisted data would serve for future reference

(addressing future incidents or conducting post-mortem analysis’ to improve response

strategies).

Since the proposed model heavily relies on real-time information sharing, its dependence on

the technological implementation is obvious. A preliminary PDA prototype implementation

was made recurring to the NOMAD platform. This platform was developed by a research

team from the University of Chile with whom I’ have been collaborating with (see list of

publications). NOMAD operates almost seamlessly in tablet PCs, Personal Digital Assistants

and Windows smart phones.

The prototype was presented to the participants (Figure 3b). Implementation details may be

consulted in (Sapateiro, Antunes et al. 2008). The main comments regarding the

implementation concerned the SMs navigability, the visualization schemas; and the

development of alternative strategies to user report information. All the comments indicate a

preference for simple, quick and low-overhead usage. The discussed issues will be integrated

in the next version of the prototype.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was partially supported by: the Portuguese Foundation for Science and

Technology, Projects: PTDC/EIA/67589/2006 and POSI/EIA/57038/2004 and Chile

Fondecyt project Nr. 1085010.

AUTHOR’S SHORT CV

The author’s graduation background is on Systems and Control Engineering, Followed his

graduation, the author took a Master degree, also in Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal;

where he conducted research on applications development for mobile devices.

Research interests rely on collaborative systems, particularly regarding informal work

processes where the author has engaged in a number of industrial and research projects.

In the past few years he is engaged in the PhD program of the Faculty of Sciences of Lisbon’s

University, Portugal; where he conducted research regarding situation awareness

enhancement when responding to emergency situations. Recent Publications focus on mobile

systems development to support team processes of emergency response teams.




Selected Related Publications

Sapateiro, C., Baloian, N., Antunes, P., Zurita, G. (2009). " An Emergency Response Model

Toward Situational Awareness Improvement". ISCRAM – International Conference on

Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Gothenburg, Sweden. May 2009.

Sapateiro, C., Baloian, N., Antunes, P., Zurita, G. (2009). "Developing Collaborative Peer-to-

peer applications on mobile devices". IEEE 13th International Conference on CSCW in

Design. Santiago, Chile. April 2009.

Sapateiro, C., Antunes, P., Zurita, G., Baloian, N., Vogt, R. (2008). "Supporting Crisis

Management Processes by Wirelessly Interconnected Tablet-PCs ". IEEE International

Conference on e-Business Engineering. Xi'An, China. October 2008.

Sapateiro, C., Antunes, P., Zurita, G., Baloian, N., Vogt, R. (2008). "Evaluating a Mobile

Emergency Response System". 14th CRIWG. Omaha, US. September 2008. In LNCS vol.

5411, Heidelberg, Springer-Verlag.

Sapateiro, C., Antunes, P., Zurita, G., Baloian, N., Vogt, R. (2008). "Supporting Unstructured

Activities in Crisis Management: A Collaboration Model and Prototype to Improve Situation

Awareness". 2º International Symposium on Mobile Information Technology for Emergency

Response. Bonn, Germany. May 2008. In LNCS vol. 5424-010, Heidelberg, Springer-Verlag.

REFERENCES

1. Gonzalez, R. A. (2008). Coordination and its ICT support in Crisis Response: confronting the information-

processing view of coordination with a case study. 41th HICSS.

2. Kelly, C. (1998). "Simplifying Disasters: Developing a model for complex non-linear events." Australian

Journal of Emergency Management.

3. Kieft, J. and A. Nur (2001). Community- Based Disaster management: a response to increased risks to

disaster with emphasiz on forest fires http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/AC798E/ac798e0e.htm.

4. Landgren, J. (2006). "Making action visible in time critical work." CHI Proceedings.

5. Landgren, J. (2007). Designing Information Technology for Emergency Response. Department of applied

Information Technology. Goteborg, Goteborg University, Sweeden. PhD.

6. Nasghar, S., D. Alahakoon, et al. (2005). "A comprehensive Conceptual Model for Disaster Management."

7. Salter, J. (1997). "Risk management in a disaster management context." Journal of Contingencies and Crisis

Management 5(1): 60-65.

8. Sapateiro, C., P. Antunes, et al. (2008). Supporting Unstructured Activities in Crisis Management: A

Collaboration Model and Prototype to Improve Situation Awareness. Lecture Notes in Computer Science,

Springer-Verlag. 5424-010.

9. Wybo, J.-L. and M. Latiers (2006). "Exploring complex emergency situations' dynamic: theoretical,

epistemological and methodological proposals." Int. J. Emergency Management 3(1): 40-51.

10. Yasemin, A. and I. Davis (1993). Rehabilitation and Reconstruction. Disaster management Training

Programme (UNDP).

Sugimoto Online Collaboration and DM:A Comparative Study


Online Collaboration and Decision Making to Prepare against a Crisis: A Comparative Study

Yasushi Sugimoto Manchester Business School

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

This paper outlines ongoing research regarding stakeholders’ collaborative practices and decision making supported by current advancement of information communication technology (ICT) in crisis management. This exploratory study investigates characteristics of ICT-supported communication, collaboration and decision making processes amongst stakeholders to prepare against a particular disaster. This research also analyses the impact of ICT on societal decision making processes in crisis management, and on human communication and decision making from socio-technological perspective. This work employs a comparative study between the UK and Japan. Interviews, pilot face-to-face (FTF) workshops and two kinds of online workshops will be conducted for data collection. The online workshops will be conducted over a commonly-used electronic meeting system (EMS) and Second Life (SL), a virtual world environment. Both FTF and EMS workshops will be implemented based on a scenario provided by the researcher.

This research will serve as favourable foundations for effective utilisation of ICT in crisis management to promote the participation of stakeholders. Analysis and comparison of group decision making processes conducted in different communication environment will provide meaningful implications for the design of decision making process and ICT. The study will also help us understand how ICT influences both on decision making processes and human decision making behaviour. Moreover, a cross-national understanding of crisis management systems and ICT utilisation for crisis management obtained through the comparative study will establish a suitable starting point for further research.

INTRODUCTION

Effective collaboration and decision making amongst stakeholders is of increasing importance in crisis management. A traditional bureaucratic crisis management system cannot be used to deal with chaotic situations in complex environments (Takeda and Helms, 2006). Thus, widespread stakeholder involvement is necessary to cope with complicated and unpredictable modern crises flexibly (McDonald and Shinha, 2008). Current advancement of information communication technology (ICT) provides opportunities to create more dynamic processes of collaboration and decision making. Particularly, web-based interactive systems called Web 2.0 promote active communication (French, Bayley and Zhang, 2008). Consequently, we can reflect our opinions timely and realise “bottom-up” decision making (Palen, Hiltz and Liu, 2007). Few existing studies, however, consider ICT-supported decision making in terms of stakeholders’ involvement and collaboration. Besides, it is essential to understand the difference between face-to-face (FTF) communication and virtual communication.



This exploratory study investigates characteristics of communication and decision making processes amongst stakeholders in crisis management, and explores applicability of ICT to crisis management to support collaborative practices and multi-criteria decision making. The study also analyses the impact of ICT on societal decision making processes in crisis management, and on communication and decision making from socio-technological perspective by comparing human behaviour in a virtual environment with that in the real world.

RESEARCH FRAMEWORK

This research employs a qualitative comparative case study between UK and Japan. Qualitative methods are advantageous to explore a complex social or human problem Creswell (2007). Comparative approach offers not only rich understanding of research issues by comparing different settings but also reliability and validity to research findings (Peräkylä, 2004). Additionally, this research uses a scenario as a foundation of communication and decision making. It is useful as a starting point of discussion (Alexander, 2000a).

This study explores disasters such as flood in the UK and earthquake in Japan. Two cities in the UK and two cities in Japan are selected as surveyed areas. Table 1 shows the blueprint of the selection and candidate areas.

UK Japan “Experienced” area Carlisle Kobe “Not experienced” area Manchester Yokohama

Table 1. Selecting framework of surveyed areas

“Experienced” means the area experienced a severe disaster over the last few decades, and “Not experienced” means the residents of an area did not experience such a disaster. This approach clearly contrasts the difference amongst surveyed areas. Carlisle experienced a severe flood in 2005 (Convery and Bailey, 2008) and Kobe experienced the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (Sakamoto, 2001). This study focuses on “pre-disaster (i.e. before an extreme event)” phase because we can contemplate past experiences and improve preparations for future disasters in this phase (Alexander, 2000b).

French, Maule and Papamichail (2009) offer a useful framework that classifies stakeholders in terms of “power (influence on the event)” and “stake (influence from the event).” Figure 1 is an example of stakeholder classification in crisis management based on their concept. This research considers the coloured areas in Figure 1.

Figure 1. An example of stakeholders in crisis management

Power

Stake● General public

● Experts● Media

● Government officials● Infrastructure companies

● NGOs● Local residents

(living in a ruined area)



RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Based on the research interest and the framework above, the following overarch question and sub-questions are organised.

Overarch question

• What role do interactive ICTs such as Web 2.0 play in collaborative practices and decision making when stakeholders prepare against a particular disaster?

Sub-questions

• [SQ-1] In what ways and to what extent do online-based decision making processes differ from actual face-to-face group decision making processes when stakeholders prepare against a particular disaster?

• [SQ-2] How do Japanese and British crisis management stakeholders such as government officials, experts and NGOs consider and evaluate ICT-supported decision making for disaster mitigation and preparation?

• [SQ-3] To what extent is the utilisation of scenario helpful to make a decision interactively amongst Japanese or British stakeholders about an unstructured complex problem to prepare against a particular natural disaster?

• [SQ-4] In what ways is an online community for crisis management designed to encourage participatory processes amongst Japanese or British stakeholders to prepare against a particular disaster?

RESEARCH METHODS AND PROCESSES

The following data collection and analysis are planned to address the research questions. As Figure 2 shows, each stage is designed to link to research questions.

Figure 2. Research steps and linkage to research questions

Stage 1: Interviews

Semi-structured interviews are conducted to stakeholders such as experts of disasters, government officials, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and infrastructure companies in the UK and Japan. The interviews aim to understand current crisis management practices and decision making processes, to hear of lessons learned from past experiences, and to

Interview

Face-to-faceworkshop

Online workshop

- Electronic meeting system workshop

- Second Life workshop

● SQ-1

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3 ● SQ-2

● SQ-3

● SQ-4

Overarch question



obtain hints for workshops. Interviews for experts aim to gain knowledge about recent crisis management situation associated with the targeted events. The total number of interviews is forty-two: twenty-one interviews in UK and Japan respectively. Figure 3 shows interview steps, expected interviewees and the number of interviews.

Figure 3. The detail of interviews

Stage 2: FTF workshops

FTF workshops aim to investigate the processes and the characteristics of actual FTF group discussion and decision making regarding particular disaster mitigation and preparation issues, and to compare them with virtual discussion and decision making. The workshops also examine the usefulness of scenarios to support discussion and decision making.

Three groups for British participants and three groups for Japanese participants are organised. Each group has four members. The FTF workshops are a pilot study, so participants are recruited from the students in the University of Manchester instead of actual stakeholders. Figure 4 presents the process of a workshop and the task the participants engage in.

Figure 4. The processes and tasks of FTF workshop

Stage 3: Online workshops

Online workshops aim to examine online-based discussion and decision making to prepare against a disaster. Additionally, their impression compared with daily FTF meetings and satisfaction is confirmed. Applicability of scenario-based approach is also analysed.

Two different types of online workshops are arranged to compare two communication platforms. One is a commonly-used electronic meeting system (EMS) workshop and the other is a Second Life (SL) workshop.

90 minutes

Pre-workshop questionnairePre-workshop questionnaire

Post-workshop questionnaire

Post-workshop questionnaireDiscussionDiscussionIntroductionIntroduction

・fundamental attitude towards group decision making, etc

・read a scenario and understand the task

・finally make several decisions

・evaluation of discussion, impression of other participants, etc.

General perspectives in-depth case analysis

GovernmentGovernmentofficialsofficials

NGOsNGOs(& Local residents)(& Local residents)

InfrastructureInfrastructurecompaniescompanies

ExpertsExperts

・Flood Risk Management Research Consortium [UK]

・The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Memorial Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution [Japan]

・City council ・Water supply・Electricity

・Local volunteer

3 people (each country)

4 people (each area)





Firstly, ten EMS workshops are organised: five workshops for British participants and five workshops for Japanese participants. Participants are recruited through interview process. The procedure of EMS workshops follows FTF workshops, and the participants engage in almost same tasks during a workshop. Each workshop is held for a few days, and the participants join the discussion when they are available. They discusses based on a scenario, too. Secondly, two SL workshops are organised. SL workshops are an exploratory study to examine the potential of three-dimensional communication environment provided by the latest ICT. The workshops are held in Manchester Business School’s SL site. Participants of SL workshops are recruited not only from FTF and EMS workshops but also in SL space because SL users are limited at the moment. The participants of SL workshops discuss usefulness of SL-based discussion and availability of SL to crisis management.

Data analysis

Collected data through three stages above are transcribed. Japanese data are translated into English. The transcribed and translated text data are analysed by using the method of discourse analysis. The videoed non-verbal data in FTF workshops are also analysed as a complemental source of discourse. Cross-sectional comparison and analysis is finally performed to draw a general conclusion.

EXPECTED CONTRIBUTION

First of all, this study serves an ICT application in decision making involving stakeholders in crisis management. Analysis of collective decision making processes performed under different communication circumstances will give suggestions both on the design of decision making processes that promote stakeholders involvement and on the application of ICT to mediate the processes. Additionally, the research gives favourable accounts of the impact of ICT on decision making processes and human decision behaviour. Furthermore, this comparative study offers beneficial research foundations for further cross-national research of crisis management. This work identifies similarities and differences of decision making processes, and of ICT utilisation modes between two countries. The study offers deeper understanding that is almost impossible within a case in only one country.

CONCLUSION

This paper gives a synopsis of ongoing research concerned with ICT-supported collaborative practices and decision making to cope with a particular disaster in the UK and Japan. This research is still in an early phase, but it will provide distinctive outcomes when it is completed. It is definitely beneficial for the researcher to receive comments from other researchers at this stage of the study.

REFERENCES

1. Alexander, D. (2000a) Disaster Prevention and Management, 3, 2, 89-97. 2. Alexander, D. (2000b) Confronting catastrophe: New perspectives on natural disasters,

Terra Publishing, Harpenden, England. 3. Convery, I. & Bailey, C. (2008) Journal of Flood Risk Management, 1, 100-109. 4. Cresswell, J. W. (2007) Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five

Traditions (2nd ed), SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.



5. French, S., Bayley, C. & Zhang, N. (2008) International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, 1, 1, 41-53.

6. French, S., Maule, J. & Papamichail, N. (2009) Decision Behaviour, Analysis and Support, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.

7. McDonald, S. M. & Shinha, R. (2008) Information communication technology: reform of organisational crisis management during natural disasters, International Journal of Management Practice, 3, 2, 131-149.

8. Palen, L., Hiltz, S. R. & Liu, S. B. (2007) Communications of the ACM, 50, 3, 54-58. 9. Peräkylä, A. (2004) Reliability and Validity in Research Based on Naturally Occurring

Social Interaction. In: Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice (2nd ed) (Ed, Silverman, D.), pp.283-304. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.

10. Sakamoto, M. (2001) Crisis Management in Japan: Lessons from the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995. In: Handbook of Crisis and Emergency Management (Ed, Farazmand, A.), pp.559-580. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.

11. Takeda, M. B. & Helms, M. B. (2006) International Journal of Public Sector Management, 19, 4, 397-411.

Personal statement I am convinced that my distinctive research focus and valuable professional

experience in Japan will inspire participants and enrich the Colloquium. Japan has been suffered from a number of serious large-scale disasters and has attempted to reduce the damage by developing social and technological measures, including the latest information communication technologies. I have accumulated knowledge of and experience with these issues through the engagement of research and consulting projects. This work experience provides the background and skills necessary for formulating my research. In the Colloquium, I expect that the presentation of my comparative and interdisciplinary research will inspire new ideas among other doctoral students. I will also be able to support other students’ work by utilising both my academic knowledge and professional experience in the discussion.

In addition, attending the Colloquium is the ideal way to polish my research plan, improve my research skills, and assist the realisation of my career goal as an academic researcher. Responses from other students and acknowledged scholars are precious to build a strong foundation of my research. Several planned activities will enable me to understand an actual academic world that is not found in published books. Furthermore, creating a network with relevant researchers is indispensable for future academic life. I am sure that this interactive event for a small number of students will provide a favourable starting point for me to become an independent academic researcher.

YASUSHI SUGIMOTO 307 Horniman House, 66 Grafton Street, Manchester, M13 9NT, UK

Phone: +44-(0)77 5845 1626 Fax: +44-(0)161 275 6596 E-mail: [email protected]

EDUCATION University of Manchester, Manchester Business School, Manchester, UK

PhD programme student (September 2007 - present)

London School of Economics, Department of Information Systems, London, UK Attended MSc Information Systems and Organisations (Research) (September 2006 – August 2007)

Waseda University, Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, Tokyo, Japan M.A. International Relations (Major: Economics), March 2000

Valedictorian of 200-member class GPA: 4.0 / 4.0; Graduated with Honours Thesis: “Regulatory Reform and Competition Policy Under Globalisation and Market

Economy: The Case of the Telecommunication Industry in Japan”

Waseda University, School of Political Science and Economics, Tokyo, Japan B.A. Economics, March, 1998

GPA: 3.5 / 4.0 Thesis: “Transition Into a Market Economy and Land Problems in China”

WORK EXPERIENCE

Japan Research Institute, Tokyo, Japan, April 2003 - Present A non-profit research organization established in 1970; Competent authorities include the Cabinet

Office and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Associate Senior Researcher

Project Manager, six governmental or industry group projects on IT exploitation or corporate management issues.

Lectured on “Marketing and IT” at small business seminar sponsored by National Association for Subcontracting Enterprises Promotion, July 2004.

Selected as youngest Associate Senior Researcher in April 2004. Researcher

Core Project Staff Member: Examined and analysed surveys; Interviewed and held meetings with professors; Documented reports; Made presentations.

Specialized in corporate/government management, industrial policy, IT policy and exploitation, and social research.

Clients included governmental agencies, local governments, industry groups, and corporations.

NTT DATA Institute of Management Consulting, Inc., Tokyo, Japan, 2000 - 2003 Associate (Junior Consultant)

Core Project Staff Member: Gathered and Analysed data; Held client discussions; Documented reports; Made presentations.

Projects included corporate risk management, national security, IT security, corporate strategy and marketing.

Clients included governmental agencies, a major corporation, and NTT group companies.

AWARDS & HONORS Member, Japan-America Student Exchange, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, September 1996 (Auspices of Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, U.S Embassy in Japan)

Selected as 1 of 20 recipients from 274 nationwide applicants Visited and attended lectures at United Nations, Department of State, Japanese Embassy, NYSE,

and other locales. Group discussion with 22 U.S students at Georgetown University.

Essay Contest commemorating the 25th anniversary of normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China: Asahi Shimbun, September 1997

Selected as 1 of 10 winners from 400 nationwide applicants. Invited to 25th anniversary ceremony hosted by the Chinese Government at the Great Hall of the

People. Group discussions with Chinese students at Beijing University.

SKILLS

Experience operating NVivo

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

Association for Computing Machinery Japan Society for Disaster Information Studies The Japan Society for Management Information Information Systems Society of Japan Japan Information-Culturology Society

Trecarichi interaction-driven mechanisms for information sharing in

emergency contexts



Towards interaction-driven mechanisms for information sharing in emergency contexts

Gaia Trecarichi

University of Trento

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

All modern information systems are required to operate in distributed and dynamic

environments. In such open settings, coordination technologies play a crucial role in the

design of flexible software systems. This is especially true for crisis management systems,

which must support mobile agents located in areas prone to sudden changes by providing

adaptive coordination mechanisms and flexible interaction patterns. Research efforts in

different areas are converging to devise suitable mechanisms for process coordination:

specifically, current results on service-oriented computing and multi-agent systems are being

integrated to enable dynamic interaction among autonomous components in large, open

systems. This proposal wants to address how agent technologies can be applied, and

eventually integrated with standard technologies, in order to build more robust and intelligent

systems. In particular, this research focuses on the exploitation and evaluation of interaction-

driven mechanisms to support different architectures for information sharing in emergency

contexts. At the current stage of this research, OpenKnowledge1 has been adopted as the

framework to model and simulate possible emergency plans. The Lightweight Coordination

Calculus (LCC) is used to specify interaction models, which are published, discovered and

executed by the OpenKnowledge distributed infrastructure in order to simulate agent

interactions. A simulation system fully integrated with the OpenKnowledge platform is being

developed to: (1) evaluate whether such infrastructure is able to support different models of

information-sharing, e.g., hierarchical and decentralized patterns of interaction; (2)

investigate under which conditions the OpenKnowledge paradigm, exploited in its

decentralized nature, can improve the performance of more conventional centralized

approaches.

RESEARCH STATEMENT

INTRODUCTION

One of the major challenges of modern information systems is to operate effectively within

open and dynamic environments. This challenge becomes a necessity for crisis management

systems. In emergency contexts, in fact, a large number of actors (e.g., local governments,

emergency coordination centers, fire brigade, police, health agency, volunteers, citizen) are

involved in the emergency activities. For instance, people in a coordination center may need

to retrieve and integrate data and services from different geographical information systems in

order to plan activities, make decisions and forward directives to their subordinates;

geographically dispersed agents have to collaborate and coordinate in the disaster scenes by

1 www.openk.org


emergency contexts



exchanging and reporting information with each other and with the people in the control

room; moreover, the information distribution system has to cope with unexpected situations

(e.g., actors changing roles, taking new and interrupting old activities).

Such e-response scenarios are quite complex and dynamic: besides the crucial problem of

coordinating services (e.g., the problem of geo-service chaining), coordination mechanisms

must support mobile agents located in areas prone to sudden changes. Here, the following key

issues need to be addressed:

Design of large-scale information systems (e.g., the scenario involve many parties

which are geographically dispersed)

Dynamic and flexible interaction patterns (e.g., emergency agents may engage in

complex interactions or suddenly change the progress of their coordinated activities).

Adaptive coordination mechanisms (e.g., an agency may deal with different

organizations having different policies and procedures)

The above issues are recognized as top priorities among research communities. For example,

(Singh et al., 2004) highlight the importance of adopting suitable software paradigms for

“programming in the large”, i.e., the need for approaches able to model systems where large

software components, built by different organizations over a long period of time, hold

interactions which are subject to unforeseen events. Also, in respect to service coordination,

(Kang, Wang, Hung, 2007) help to distinguish orchestration from choreography approaches:

the former oriented in describing how composite processes are implemented and the latter

focused on the interactions enacted by the processes without any central entity. The above

mentioned works, put in evidence the role played by coordination mechanisms in software

system design.

Several research communities are tackling the problem of devising suitable coordination

technologies: works on service-oriented computing and multi-agent systems are converging

to enable dynamic interaction among autonomous components in large, open systems. On the

one hand, the paradigm of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and, as a consequence, that

of web services, is rapidly being accepted as the standard for coordinating distributed

processes across networks, like Internet; on the other hand, agent technologies allow active

entities to operate autonomously and to interact with each other in order to accomplish a task

in the environment where they inhabit.

RESEARCH FOCUS

This thesis proposal concerns how agent technologies can be applied, and eventually

integrated with standard technologies, in order to coordinate agents distributed in dynamic

environments such as emergency response. This research focuses on the exploitation and

evaluation of interaction-driven mechanisms to support different architectures for information

sharing in emergency contexts. In particular, OpenKnowledge (Robertson et al., 2007) is

adopted as the underlying framework which provides an interaction-driven mechanism

relying on a peer-to-peer (p2p) infrastructure. The OpenKnowledge (OK) framework has

been developed within the European OpenKnowledge project. In this context, a distributed

infrastructure has been developed to enable peers to find and coordinate with each other by

publishing, discovering and executing interaction models, i.e. multi party conversational

protocols, specified in the Lightweight Coordination Calculus (LCC) (Robertson, 2004).


emergency contexts



A first goal of this study is to investigate the ability of the OK framework in modelling and

simulating diverse (e.g., centralized and decentralized) information sharing strategies. A

second aim is to evaluate how the distributed coordination technology provided performs

when dealing with continuous changes in the settings. For this purpose, a simulation–based

test-bed fully integrated with the OK platform is being developed.

The main expected contributions of this research are:

The full use and testing of an interaction-driven mechanism, like the one provided by the

OK infrastructure, in a realistic and demanding use case;

The provision of an agent-based simulation environment in which to evaluate interaction

models, coordination tasks and diverse emergency information-sharing models;

An analysis and comparison between the effectiveness of the OK infrastructure in

centralized (hierarchical) and decentralized (p2p) information sharing.

The next two sections briefly describe the methodology followed and the current state of this

research respectively.

METHODOLOGY

As previously hinted, interactions are key aspects in this work. The research is thus carried

out along two main phases: (1) protocol engineering and (2) development of a prototype

simulation system, where the whole machinery is tested and its performance measured in

specific emergency contexts.

Protocol Engineering

It is crucial to provide an effective design of interaction models in order to apply them in

realistic contexts. Since interaction models shape coordination patterns occurring in well

defined settings (e.g., e-response, e-health, etc.), it is essential to study the functional

requirements of the specific domain. This helps to identify some common interaction patterns

occurring in emergency situations. Such interaction patterns can form the basis for

identifying basic protocols which in turn may constitute reusable interaction units needed to

compose larger protocols in a modular way. The analysis should be carried out with experts

in the field. A design methodology would be useful to provide a solid basis for modelling and

composing protocols. In particular, some agent-based software methodologies (e.g.,

TROPOS2) can be investigated, since the protocol language was originally developed to

specify interactions in a Multi-Agents Systems.

E-Response Simulation System Development

An agent-based e-Response simulation system is developed in order to fully test and evaluate

the underlying OK platform. It is composed of an agent network and a simulation engine (see

Figure 1). The former component models a hierarchy of e-response agents, which plan

activities and coordinate with each other through autonomous reasoning and predefined LCC

interaction models respectively; the latter module simulates the environment where all the

2 http://www.troposproject.org/


emergency contexts



involved actors operate. An extensive description of the system can be found in (Trecarichi et

al., 2008).

Figure 1: e-Response system’s architecture

The e-Response simulation system is used to: (1) develop research on interaction-centered

coordination models, i.e., investigating how appropriate an LCC-like protocol is to reflect

dynamic emergency coordinated tasks; (2) evaluate the ability of the whole OK infrastructure

to support different models of information sharing; (3) bring the approach into the application

field. The evaluation entails two dimensions: (i) a qualitative validation of the simulation

system and the interaction models; such validation can be done by involving the local

institutions working in crisis management. Expert people in the field can give useful

feedbacks by saying how well the simulations reflect the actual plans. Moreover, computer

simulations can give useful hints to the experts by showing possible scenarios they did not

foresee, since the plan is actually written on paper and is often too costly to be simulated. In

this case, the simulation system could act as a training system for the experts; (ii) the

evaluation of how the approach scales. Such evaluation is done by simulating a large number

of agents participating in different emergency coordination strategies and by measuring the

performance, for example, in terms of number of people rescued.

CURRENT STATE OF RESEARCH

We started to analyze some aspects of emergency response (e.g., typical phases, some

functional requirement) and focused on a specific emergency scenario, namely, a flooding in

Trento city, Italy. The work moved its steps from the study of documents on existing

emergency plans and from interviews with experts. We identified emergency agents (e.g.,

fire-fighters, policemen), the main organizations involved (e.g., Emergency Coordination

Center, Fire Agency, Civil Protection Unit), a hierarchy between the actors (e.g., emergency

chief, subordinates), service agents (e.g., water level sensors, route services, weather forecast

services, GIS services) and a number of possible interactions among the agents. We modeled

part of the emergency plan in terms of interaction models and built a simulation-based test-

bed to evaluate the OK framework in a specific evacuation scenario. The current system is

based on the initial prototype presented in (Marchese et al., 2008) and extends it both in a

complete integration with the OK platform and in the inclusion of a realistic flood-simulator.

Experiments were designed to simulate and compare a centralized information-gathering

strategy against a decentralized one. Preliminary results showed the system's capability of


emergency contexts



supporting the two afore-mentioned models of interaction and, under ideal assumptions, a

comparable performance in both cases.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Part of this work has been supported by the OpenKnowledge project (FP6-027253).

Acknowledgments go to Prof. Maurizio Marchese for his guidance, to Prof. Dave Robertson

for his advices on the formulation of the hypothesis to test and to all people in the OK project

for their advices and support.

REFERENCES

1. Kang Z., Wang, C., Hung K. (2007) WS-CDL+: An Extended WS-CDL Execution

Engine for Web Service Collaboration, IEEE Int. Conf. on Web Services (ICWS) pp.

928-935

2. Marchese, M., Vaccari, L., Trecarichi, G., Osman, N. and McNeill, F. (2008) Interaction

models to support peer coordination in crisis management, 5th International Conference

on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, Washington, DC, USA

http://www.iscram.org/dmdocuments/ISCRAM2008/papers/ISCRAM2008_Marchese_eta

l_b.pdf

3. Robertson, D. (2004) A lightweight coordination calculus for agent systems. Declarative

Agent Languages and Technologies, 183-197.

4. Robertson, D., Walton, C., Barker, A., Besana, P., Chen-Burger, Y., Hassan, F., Lambert

D., Li, G., McGinnis, J., Osman, N., Bundy, A., McNeil, F., van Harmelen, F., Sierra, C.,

and Giunchiglia, F. (2007) Models of interaction as a grounding for peer to peer

knowledge sharing. Advances in Web Semantics, Vol. 1.

5. Singh, M., Chopra, A., Desai, N.; and Mallya, A. (2004). “Protocols for processes:

programming in the large for open systems”. ACM SIGPLAN Notices 39(12):73.83.

6. Trecarichi, G., Rizzi, V., Vaccari, L., Pane, J. and Marchese, M. (2008) Summative report

on use of OK approach in eResponse: integration and evaluation results. Openknowledge

Deliverable. http://www.cisa.inf.ed.ac.uk/OK/Deliverables/D6.8.pdf

http://www.iscram.org/dmdocuments/ISCRAM2008/papers/ISCRAM2008_Marchese_etal_b.pdf

http://www.iscram.org/dmdocuments/ISCRAM2008/papers/ISCRAM2008_Marchese_etal_b.pdf

http://www.cisa.inf.ed.ac.uk/OK/Deliverables/D6.8.pdf


emergency contexts



Personal Statement

With the PhD colloquium, I expect to meet people who can give me feedback on the current

state of my PhD and suggestions on its completion. Also, I feel the necessity to discuss about

the work done so far with researchers which have not been directly involved in the

OpenKnowledge project; this because, I think, external experts can give a less biased opinion

on the quality of the work and can help to enrich the range of perspectives under which the

research problem can be viewed. Although the work conducted so far comprises some

analysis of the emergency response domain, the focus of the research is not strictly related to

it, being rather centered in coordination technologies (which may be applied in many

different contexts). From this point of view, an exchange with other PhD colleagues working

in the field of emergency response could benefit my own work and introduce some new cues.

What I hope to contribute to this event is to exchange the knowledge acquired during the

development of the agent-based simulation within the OpenKnowledge project.


emergency contexts



Curriculum Vitae

Personal Information

Name: Gaia Trecarichi

Place & date of birth: Palermo, 28.03.1978

Nationality: Italian

E-mail: [email protected]

Education

Oct 2005 Abilitation to the profession of Engineer, University of Palermo.

Apr 2005 Degree in Computer Engineering (Summa Cum Laude), University of Palermo.

Thesis Title: “Semantic Spaces, Ontologies and Chatbots to Interact with a Cultural Heritage Knowledge-Based System”.

Sept 2002 – Jun 2003 Sócrates-Erasmus student at the University of Bath (Department of Computer Science), United Kingdom.

Jul 1996 Diploma di Maturità Tecnica (technical specialization in Computer Science).

Training

May 2007 – now PhD training at the ICT Doctorate School, University of Trento, Italy

May 2008 – May 2008 EASSS 2008: European Agent Systems Summer School, New University of Lisbon, Portugal;

Jul 2006 –Aug 2006 ESSLLI 2006: European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information, University of Malaga, Spain;

Jul 2005 – Aug 2005 International Summer School for German Language and Culture: German language course, intermediate level, final assessment “gut”/ “good”,

Ruprecht Karl Universität, Heidelberg, Germany;

mailto:[email protected]


emergency contexts



Oct 2004 – May 2005 German Language Course of 75 hours at the Goethe Zentrum of Palermo; final assessment:

“sehr gut”/ “very good”.

Experience

Feb 2009 – now University of Trento, teaching assistant in the Master Course “Web Languages”;

Jan 2009 – now University of Trento; working at “LiveMemories”

project, funded by the Autonomous Province of Trento (Italy);

Apr 2007 – Dec 2008 University of Trento; working at FP6 European

project “Open Knowledge”;

Feb 2008 – Apr 2008 University of Trento, teaching assistant in the

Master Course “Web Languages”;

Nov 1996 – Nov 1997 Laboratory of Physics, University of Palermo, Computer laboratory technician within the INFM

project “Analysis and modelling of electronic noise in fast bipolar devices”.

Scholarship

Apr 2005 Scholarship funded by DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst) for a German

language course in Germany.

Sept 2002 – Jun 2003 ERASMUS-SOCRATES scholarship for the A.Y. 2002-2003 at the University of Bath, UK.

Nov 1996 – Nov 1997 Scholarship funded by INFM (National Institute for the Physics of Matter), within the project

“Analysis and modelling of electronic noise in fast bipolar devices ”.

Publications

Marchese M, Vaccari L, Trecarichi G, Osman N, McNeill F, Besana P. 2009. “An Interaction-Centric Approach to Support Peer Coordination in Distributed Emergency Response Management”. Intelligent Decision Technologies: An International Journal.

M. Marchese, L. Vaccari, G. Trecarichi, N. Osman, F. McNeill 2008. “Interaction models to support peer coordination in crisis management”. Proceedings of 5° Intl. Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management

http://www.cisa.informatics.ed.ac.uk/OK/drupal/publications/aid/566






http://www.cisa.informatics.ed.ac.uk/OK/drupal/node/670

http://www.cisa.informatics.ed.ac.uk/OK/drupal/node/670


emergency contexts



G. Pilato, A. Augello, G. Trecarichi, G. Vassallo, S. Gaglio “LSA-Enhanced Ontologies for Information Exploration System on Cultural Heritage”, AI*IA

Workshop for Cultural Heritage, University of Milan Bicocca, 20 september 2005.

Certificates

TOEFL Test Of English as a Foreign Language (on Jan

2007 - Score: 96/120).

Foreign Languages

Italian: Mother tongue.

English: Advanced reading skills, excellent writing skills, excellent verbal skills.

German: Intermediate reading skills, basic writing skills,

basic verbal skills.

Computer Skills

Programming languages: Java, Prolog, Perl, C, Pascal;

Web Technology http, HTML, XML, Web server (Apache Tomcat), Web services (WSDL, SOAP, Apache Axis);

Database SQL, PostgreSQL, PostGIS, JDBC;

Other languages and specific linraries

LCC (Lightweight Coordination Calculus), AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language), Matlab,

HTML, XML, UML, Java-Swing, Lex, Yacc;

Operating Systems: Windows, Linux

Software: Eclipse, LaTex, Matlab, StarUML, OpenCyc, TeamBot, Microsoft Pack Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access)

Other Training

Apr 2007 – Jul 2007 Collaboration to the realization of a Cd-ROM titled

“Nord e Sud. Conoscere contesti e migrazioni per promuovere convivenza” (North and South. Knowing contexts and migrations to promote

cohabitation), Documentation Center of the Diocesan Mission Center, Trento;


emergency contexts



Apr 2007 – Jun 2007 “International Cooperation and solidarity”: sensitization path on the differences and

imbalances in the era of globalization, Tremembè Onlus, Associazione Culturale e di Volontariato

Sociale, Trento;

Oct 2006 – Feb 2007 “Non Muri Ma Ponti”/“Not Walls but Bridges”:

training course in International Cooperation and Volunteering, ONG. ACCRI (Associazione di Cooperazione Cristiana Internazionale), Trento

Vogt ICT Governance in Disaster Management



Utilizing ICT Governance Methods to improve Disaster Preparedness and Disaster Response

Marcus Vogt

Bond University (Australia)

[email protected] / [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Communication and information are playing an essential role in Disaster Management. Accurate

information at the right time and at the right place can save lives. Nowadays, Information and

Communication Technology (ICT) can significantly lower processing times between involved

parties and increase information richness and reach. However, the used technology has to be

reliable, appropriate and usable otherwise technology is more a hindrance than an improvement.

ICT Governance methods and frameworks are proven tools to manage ICT in commercially

driven organizations. Clear responsibilities, optimized ICT portfolios, strategic alignment,

transparent risk assessment, maturity models and managed services are the key factors for a

successful and effective ICT implementation to support and advance different business models.

Frameworks such as COBIT, ITIL, CMMI, ValIT, ISO27000, ISO20000 and ISO 38500 provide

such implementation guidelines and best practices. However, most of these guidelines and best

practices are optimized for commercially driven organizations. The planed PhD thesis will

investigate and demonstrate the usability and limits of ICT Government tools to improve

information flow and communication processes in Disaster Management. The major goal is to

provide an adapted and improved framework for an optimized ICT management in crisis and

disaster related processes and therefore improve the overall disaster preparedness and disaster

response.

RESEARCH STATEMENT

Well functioning infrastructures play vital roles in today’s high-tech society and economy. We

highly depend on secure and consistent water and energy supplies as well as reliable Information

and Communication Technologies (ICT). Major failures of such important infrastructure

systems, caused accidentally, by intent or by an act of nature beyond control can result in serious

consequences for the population. (Barton 2007, Borodzicz 2005)

Terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid and London as well as an increasing number of natural

disasters such as the cyclone in Myanmar (Burma) and the earthquake in China demonstrated the

dangers to which our society is exposed. Protecting the population from the effects of disasters

and threats requires extraordinary attention of public and private institutions. It is more than

appropriate that governmental institutions as well as privately owned companies, who run critical

infrastructures and/or are involved in disaster management processes, develop and use enhanced

and joint solutions to prevent and mitigate the effects of disasters and crises.




A more reliable provision of critical infrastructures and information channels, supported and

improved by the correct use of information technology and technology management methods,

can save lives in the event of a catastrophe. Therefore, efficient co-operation and communication

amongst and between the involved parties (Government, Red Cross, Civil Protection, Fire-

fighters, etc.) is essential for effective and comprehensive protection measures (UN 2008, DHS

2008).

My current research has shown that Van Den Eede and Van de Walle (2005) were the first

authors who investigated the effects and benefits of ICT Governance Methods for Information

Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAMs). They came to the conclusion that

mainstream methods in ICT Governance can have cross-fertilization effects on ISCAMS and

further research should be conducted. Marich et al. (2008) examined the inter-organizational ICT

Governance structure by the means of a case study performed at a Medical Emergency Service

Agency in California. The aim of their research was to improve inter-organizational information

flow by a standardized framework. Even though there are initial approaches to investigate the

influences of ICT Governance on disaster preparedness and disaster response, it became clear

that there is not enough research done in this area and that there are no universal ICT

Governance standards established to support emergency management. As a result, critical

infrastructure suppliers and involved governmental institutions are using different models, which

makes efficient co-operation and communication difficult (Dilmaghani & Rao 2009). Moreover,

there are currently no capabilities for the infrastructure operators to measure and compare their

ICT-related crisis management maturity.

A reliable and trusting collaboration between the government and critical infrastructure operators

is vital to identify and specify necessary protection measures for known and unknown threats.

The state is usually responsible for the security of the population and coordinates information

and communication processes. However, only the operators with their particular knowledge of

their infrastructures are able to implement protective and counter measures in an effective way

(Smith & Millar 2002).

The general research question of my planned PhD thesis is:

“How can existent ICT governance frameworks and methods be used, adapted and

improved to develop a new framework that meets the general requirements of disaster

management, to prevent and mitigate effects of disasters”

Thus, the aim of the thesis is to develop a new ICT-related framework, tailored for private and

public organizations that run and control critical infrastructures, to reduce their vulnerability to

all kind of disasters, catastrophes, accidents and criminal activities. In this context, the paper will

focus on ICT-related, organizational, personal and technical protection measures. The

development of such an ICT-related framework with a focus on the communication optimization,

danger analysis, risk management systems and risk minimization measures will help

infrastructure operators in the public and private sector to improve their crisis management and

communication processes by the mean of reliable and managed ICT services.

A multi-stage analysis to identify given risks for critical infrastructure operators and

governmental institutions and a review of already establishes standards such as ISO 17799,




COBIT, ITIL and EMIS will be the foundation of my thesis. Based on this the thesis will

investigate the overall awareness of ICT Governance methods at multiple institutions (public and

private) which are involved in emergency management and civil protection. It will furthermore

analyse a collection of threat scenarios to identify particular weak points due to the lack of

proper ICT management, and then formulate protection objectives to develop protective

measures and counter measures by the means of an adapted and improved ICT Governance

framework that meets the demands of emergency management.

This development process will lead to a joint perspective of internal and external security

measures for critical infrastructure operators and governmental institutions under an ICT

Governance body. It will enable all participants to use a standardized guideline and framework

for efficient co-operation and communication. It will improve transparency and reliability of ICT

services used in the different emergency and disaster scenarios. Moreover, their maturity level in

terms of ICT-related crisis management will be measurable and comparable. It will also provide

a guideline to an improved ICT portfolio aligning the ICT investments and strategic goals. The

focus lies in the development of an ICT-related concept to protect human life by enhancing the

communication between different operators and governmental institutions and reduce the

vulnerability of critical infrastructures to natural events and incidents resulting from technical

failure, human error, terrorist attacks or criminal acts.

Currently, the following Institutions and persons are willing to support my research:

- City Council of Stuttgart / Germany (Mr. Andreas Majer, IT Manager / Emergency

Commissioner)

- EnBW AG, Power Supplier, State of Baden-Wuerttemberg / Germany (Mr. Claus Krög,

Crisis Management Team)

- German Red Cross, Dispatching Centre – Rheinstetten / Germany (Dr.rer.nat. Jürgen

Schöchlin, Management Board)

Additionally I’m in negotiations with:

- THW Germany (Civil Protection)

- Fire-fighters Dispatching Centre - City of Stuttgart / Germany

- Gold Coast City Council, Australia

- Australian Government (Emergency Management Australia)

DELIVERABLES / METHODS

Analysis of the acceptance / awareness of ICT Government frameworks and tools in institutions

that are involved in disaster control and emergency management. (A survey will be conducted

involving multiple public and private institutions that run critical infrastructures or are part of

civil protection)




Analysis of damage and threat scenarios, particularly communication and information channels

including the used technologies, by the means of ICT Government tools and frameworks.

(Qualitative and quantitative methods, particularly narrative interviews with stakeholders and

analysis of internal documents e.g. documentation of an emergency drill)

Highlighting the limits of ICT Government frameworks and tools. Suggestions for

improvement.(Review of literature and case studies)

Comparison of different scenarios by the means of serious game method to demonstrate

effectiveness of ICT Governance methods in disaster preparedness and disaster response. (A

serious game will be developed by the means of appropriate software. The test teams will have to

solve random emergency scenarios with and without the help of the developed ICT Government

framework. This will show the limits and benefits of managed ICT services and processes in

emergency management in and nearly “real” environment)

Development of a meta model and framework for ICT Governance in Disaster Management

based on the collected results and data.

PERSONAL STATEMENT

My interest on the subject of emergency management / disaster management has developed

during a co-operation with the Gold Coast City Council, Australia. Even though Australia is a

strongly developed country, its citizens still have to suffer the consequences of natural disasters

year over year. Floods, bush fires, cyclones even oil pests are threatening the lives of humans

and animals.

I have a strong knowledge in ICT Governance and ICT Strategy due to my former studies and

working experience. Additionally I have read a lot about disasters and their consequences.

However, to fully understand the dependencies of ICT and disaster preparation and disaster

response processes I’ll need a deeper insight into ISCRAM.

Attending the PhD Colloquium at ISCRAM 2009 would significantly accelerate my ongoing

research since I would be able to present and discuss my ideas with peers and it would enable me

built an academic network for further co-operations. I’m convinced that my broad knowledge

and experience about ICT Management could also help other PhD Students to overcome the

hurdles in their projects.

REFERENCES

Barton, L., 2007, Crisis leadership now: A real-world guide to preparing for threats, disaster,

sabotage, and scandal. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Borodzicz, E., 2005, Risk, Crisis and Security Management. West Sussex, England: John Wiley

and Sons Ltd.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS), 2009,

http://www.dhs.gov/xinfoshare/programs/editorial_0404.shtm (10.03.2009)




Dilmaghani, R. B., Rao, R. R., 2009, A Systematic Approach to Improve Communication for

Emergency Response, Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System

Sciences – 2009, ISBN: 978-0-7695-3450-3/09

Marich, M. J., Horan, T. A., Schooly, B. L., Understanding IT Governance within the San Mateo

County Emergency Medical Service Agency, Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM

Conference 2008, (F. Fiedrich and B. Van de Wall, eds), Washington, DC, USA

Smith, L., Millar, D., 2002, Crisis Management and Communication; How to Gain and Maintain

Control, Second Edition, San Francisco, CA, International Association of Business

Communicators

United Nations (UN), 2009, http://www.un.org/terrorism/ (10.03.2009)

Van Den Eede, G., Van de Walle, B. A., 2005, Operational Risk in Incident Management: a

Crossfertilisation between ISCRAM and IT Governance, Proceedings of the 2nd International

ISCRAM Conference (B. Van de Walle and B. Carlé, eds.), Brussels, Belgium




CURRICULUM VITAE – Marcus Vogt

CAREER HISTORY:

09/2008 – today Freelancer / Researcher

Involved in different ICT projects. Particular ICT Governance and ICT

Infrastructure Management

02/2008 – 08/2008 Gold Coast City Council, Australia

Internship, Master Thesis: “Aligning ICT Projects and Investments to

Community Values in a Public Organisation”

09/1998 – 08/2007 Dambach Werke GmbH, Gaggenau, Germany

(Holding of Dambach Corporations)

Dambach is an international industrial manufacturing company and one of

the world leaders in traffic management solutions with subsidiary

companies for CI products, print media and automatic storage systems.

03/2005 – 08/2007 “Vice Manager IT department”

Promotion to “Vice Manager IT-department”. I shared responsibility for

human resources and IT budget with the CIO for the whole IT department.

My major tasks were the conception and evaluation of new IT strategies

like the integration of ITIL, reorganization of our helpdesk and renewal of

the companywide IT infrastructure (VoIP, VPN, virtualisation,

standardisation) to improve our service and accelerate the business. I

represented the IT department to our management board in absence of the

CIO.

10/2003 – 03/2005 “Team Leader Technical Staff“

Job enlargement as a “Team Leader Technical Staff“. In addition to my

duties as an “IT Project Manager”, I led a team of technicians and

administrators in our data centre. I was responsible for the fulfilment of

our SLA with all our departments, branch offices and subsidiary

companies as well as the resource planning in the day-to-day business for

our Network-, Server- and Client-Specialists.

10/2001 – 03/2003 “IT Project Manager“

Permanent employment as an “IT Project Manager” at the central IT

department of Dambach Werke GmbH. My main tasks were project

planning and implementation of contemporary technologies, as well as the

coordination of internal and external service providers. Additionally, I had

internal duties and responsibilities as a consultant for our subsidiary

companies.




09/1998 – 09/2001 “Student Trainee”

During my studies at the University of Cooperative Education, I spent my

practical course time with my sponsor Dambach Werke GmbH. In this

time I was coached by a mentor to gain a maximum of practical

experience. At the end of my studies, I wrote my diploma thesis at one of

our subsidiary companies the IMM-Network GmbH, Ettlingen, Germany.

This thesis was the foundation to implement a Customer Relationship

Management System at the IMM-Network GmbH and covered the

demand analysis, system analysis, problem analysis, budgeting and project

scheduling.

STUDY:

01/2009 – today Bond University, Queensland Australia, Faculty of Business, Information

Technology and Sustainable Development (in co-operation with

University of Heilbronn Germany)

PhD Student / Academic Fellow

Thesis Topic: ICT Governance & Disaster Management

09/2007 – 08/2008 Bond University, Queensland Australia, Faculty of Business, Information

Technology and Sustainable Development

Course of Studies: Master of Information Technology (Honours 1st Class)

10/1998 – 09/2001 University of Cooperative Education, Karlsruhe, Germany. Faculty of

Information Technology and Economics.

Course of Studies: Information Management

Student research project: Workflow Management (grade:1,8)

Diploma thesis: Customer Relationship Management (grade:1,4)

Degree: Diplom Wirtschaftsinformatiker (BA), Bachelor of Arts (Honours

2nd

/1st) (final overall grade:1,8)

02/1997 – 07/1998 University of Karlsruhe, Germany. Faculty of Business Economics

Course of Studies: Industrial Engineering

AWARDS:

Placed on Dean’s and Vice Chancellor’s List in semester:

2007/3 (88% - GPA 4.0)

2008/1 (89% - GPA 4.0)

First in Class:

Managing IT Projects (90%)

ICT Governance (91%)

Literature Review (90%),




Research Proposal and Seminar (90%)

Melbourne IT Award 2008:

Best Postgraduate Research Project 2008

Academic Fellowship (fully sponsored PhD-stipend for outstanding

students)

PUBLICATIONS:

In progress: “Aligning ICT Projects and Investments to Community Values” (To be

published in: “ICT Governance in E-Governance” edited by Prof. Dr.

Kieth Hales) – Chapter is already fully submitted and accepted.

Walton Interdependencies of Scope and Environment in ICTD Projects


Interdependencies of Scope and Environment in Designing, Managing, and Evaluating ICTD Projects

Rebecca Walton University of Washington [email protected]

ABSTRACT

My dissertation research extends C. West Churchman’s systems approach to designing management information systems, developing a framework to reconceptualize information and communication technology for development (ICTD) projects. Building on Churchman’s concepts, I propose a framework in which contextual factors are strategically placed in either environment or scope. (Environmental factors affect the system but cannot be changed, whereas scope includes factors affecting the system that can be changed.)

A major theme in ICTD literature is the importance of considering contextual factors in project design. However, “context” is nebulous. Contextual factors include anything from reliable power sources to cultural constraints to budgets to stakeholder perspectives. This dissertation work provides a framework for strategically defining ICTD project scope and environment, providing a practical handle on contextual issues.

ICTD case studies abound, and experts call for “meso-level” research that provides a mid-level understanding between broad theories and case studies. My proposed research begins to fill this gap by meeting the following objectives:

• Develop a framework for better designing, managing, and evaluating ICTD projects • Ground this framework in theory and evaluation literature • Conduct a multi-method study applying the framework

The study will include a literature synthesis analyzing 25 ICTD case studies, comparing relationships among scope, environment, and resources and examining the level of strategy and intentionality in managing these concepts. To provide further clarity, I will interview team members from several case studies to develop a richer picture of how contextual factors were addressed and the potential usefulness of the framework.

RESEARCH STATEMENT

At the time of this application, it has been less than two months since I passed my general exam. Under the guidance of my dissertation committee chair, I have begun to develop my dissertation proposal, which is expected to be complete before the ISCRAM PhD colloquium. The following description summarizes the central concepts of my proposed dissertation focus and the methodology I envision using to explore these concepts.

The importance of contextual factors to information and communication technology for development (ICTD) projects is a major theme in existing literature. The conception of “context” is multi-faceted, with cultural, physical, infrastructural, political, and other dimensions. Thus, context can be a vague and confusing concept to address in a practical and



thorough way because it is so nebulous. Contextual factors can include anything from reliable power sources to cultural constraints to budgets to weather to stakeholder perspectives. My proposed dissertation research develops a framework to enable designers to explicitly define scope and environment for ICTD projects, providing a practical handle on contextual issues. As discussed below, explicitly defining scope will support designers in identifying important factors that are within the project’s power to affect, and explicitly defining environment will enable designers to identify relevant factors that cannot be changed.

My dissertation research will extend C. West Churchman’s systems approach to designing management information systems by developing a framework to reconceptualize ICTD projects (1979). Building on Churchman’s concepts, this framework enables considerations such as available resources to drive the intentional and strategic placement of contextual factors in either the environment or the scope. In this framework, environmental factors are defined as those that affect the system but cannot be changed, whereas the scope is defined to include factors that affect the system and can be changed. Unlike Churchman’s systems approach, my framework calls system designers to decide, rather than identify, whether contextual factors are within scope or in the environment. The implications of placement decisions are significant, as they affect fundamental aspects of the ICTD project—including identification of stakeholders, project goal, and likelihood of success.

The amount and type of project resources has a close relationship with the classification of contextual factors as environmental or within project scope. Resources include, for example, money, time, manpower, areas and levels of expertise, equipment, social capital, etc. Considering resources, scope, and environment in conjunction can provide a structure for planning, designing, and evaluating ICTD projects in a comprehensive and cohesive way. For example, an ICTD project for emergency response could look very different, depending on the classification of a single contextual factor such as emergency response processes. If emergency response processes are placed in the environment, then the project needs fewer resources, such as time during the design phase and expertise in process development. An appropriate goal for this project is to support existing emergency response efforts. However, if the processes themselves are considered changeable, then the scope is significantly broader, and the project requires additional resources, such as time for training and generating buy-in for the new processes. In addition, the stakeholder groups are likely to expand, including not only ICT users but also people performing and approving emergency response processes. An appropriate goal for the project with this expanded scope is to optimize emergency response.

As the above example shows, there are tradeoffs involved in balancing scope and environment: e.g., expanding scope increases not only the type, number, and reach of potential benefit, but also project risks, costs, and responsibilities. However, placing too many contextual factors in the environment can result in a project with little change and little benefit, which can alienate stakeholders, including users, funders, and beneficiaries. Thus, there is a “sweet spot” in ICTD project design and management that, until now, has been unarticulated, with little structure to aid project designers in achieving it.

In addition to providing a structure for considering ICTD projects, my proposed research addresses another gap in current research—identifying patterns across ICTD case studies and enabling future projects to build on previous work. ICTD case studies abound, and experts are calling for “meso-level” research that provides a mid-level understanding between broad theories and case studies. My proposed research begins to fill this gap by not only developing a framework but applying that framework to existing case studies to generate a new way to



classify, think about, and learn from existing ICTD work. My dissertation will aim to meet the following objectives:

• Develop a framework for better designing, managing, and evaluating ICTD projects • Ground this framework in theory and evaluation literature • Conduct a multi-method study, applying the framework to existing case studies

The study will include a literature synthesis analyzing 25 ICTD case studies according to the framework, comparing relationships among scope, environment, and resources and examining the level of strategy and intentionality in managing these concepts. To provide further clarity, I will interview team members from several case studies to develop a richer picture of how contextual factors were addressed and the potential usefulness of the proposed framework.

REFERENCES

1. Churchman, C.W. (1979). The Systems Approach (revised and updated). New York: Dell Publishing.

COLLOQUIUM CONTRIBUTIONS

Contributions Offered: I can offer a perspective on IS design that is focused on human and contextual factors affecting project success and system use. My research interests involve information and communication technology for development (ICTD), particularly IS design for international humanitarian organizations. I can contribute to the colloquium as a qualitative researcher with extensive field experience, having designed and participated in research projects in multiple countries, including Mozambique and Kyrgyzstan. One of my current research projects involves helping the emergency logistics team of a large humanitarian organization to better meet needs in the field during emergencies. The multi-method study includes field research in Bolivia, Georgia, and Bangladesh to understand and synthesize field perspectives during emergencies and use this information to optimize logistics practices related to information behavior.

Contributions Sought: I am eager to learn more about all of the topics listed in the colloquium description—particularly the career development strategies and publication targets. Until recently, I had planned to work for a humanitarian organization after graduation but have recently been considering a research career in academia. I want to learn more about the kinds of opportunities that are available in academia and the best way to prepare. Participating in this colloquium would provide a valuable opportunity to learn more about academic careers related to IS design and ICTD and to learn more about the relevant work of researchers in my peer group and that of the faculty mentors leading the discussions.



Rebecca Walton

University of Washington [email protected] 14 Loew Hall, Campus Box 352195 206.291.6223 Seattle, WA 98195

Research Interests My research interests center on information and communication technology for development (ICTD), particularly information systems design and project management. Specifically, my interests involve designing systems for international humanitarian and nonprofit organizations, focusing on human and contextual factors that affect project success and design strategies to support decision making at multiple levels. I am a primarily qualitative researcher with extensive field experience, having designed and participated in research projects in regions including Africa, Central Asia, and the U.S. My research experience involves ICTD projects to support public health, microfinance, and emergency logistics.

Education PhD in Human Centered Design & Engineering

University of Washington, Seattle, WA Expected June 2010 (GPA: 3.95) Certificate: User‐Centered Design

Dissertation: Interdependencies of Scope and Environment in Designing, Managing, and Evaluating ICTD Projects Chair: Dr. Mark Haselkorn

Master of Arts in Technical Writing University of North Texas, Denton, TX Graduated summa cum laude May 2006 (GPA: 4.0) Cognate Area: Nonprofit Administration

Thesis: Technical Communication and the Needs of Small 501(c)(3) Organizations Chair: Dr. Lynne Cooke

Bachelor of Arts in English Abilene Christian University, Abilene, TX Graduated summa cum laude May 1999 (GPA: 3.98) Minors: Digital Media, Journalism

Research Experience Research Assistant, University of Washington, Seattle, WA (Feb. ’09–present) National Center for Border Security and Immigration Organizational Analysis Project 6‐year project funded by the Department of Homeland Security

• Conduct literature review to identify issues of interest to compare among three sites along the U.S. border

• Participate on an interdisciplinary, three‐university team to plan and conduct field research in three border sectors: El Paso, Texas; Detroit, Michigan; and Blaine, Washington



Research Consultant, University of Washington, World Vision International, Seattle, WA (Oct. ’08–present) Global Prepositioning and Resource Network Information Management and Value Assessment Project

• Interviewed World Vision employees at the national, regional, and global levels, representing a program, leadership, or logistics perspective

• Analyzed interview results to produce recommendations for the GPRN team to better meet logistical needs during humanitarian emergencies

• Plan and conduct field research at three national offices in different regions of the world to analyze GPRN’s role in recent emergencies and further identify ways for GPRN to improve logistical service

Research Assistant, University of Washington, Seattle, WA (Sept. ’08–present) Central Asia Information and Communication Project 5‐year project funded by the National Science Foundation

• Analyze five years’ worth of qualitative and quantitative data from four developing countries in Central Asia to identify trends in adopting and adapting information and communication technologies

• Plan and conduct user research in Kyrgyzstan to identify uses and influences of information and communication technologies

Research Consultant, PATH, Seattle, WA (April ’08 –May ’08) Landscape Analysis for the Optimize Project 5‐year project funded by the World Health Organization

• Reviewed handheld digital device designs and technologies through literature, press and online systems reviews, interviews of vendors and client programs

• Conducted an in‐depth review of eight global health projects that involved the use of handheld digital devices

• Interviewed experts in using handheld digital devices regarding use of the device in global health, applicability, future trends, technologies needed, and unanticipated consequences of use of handheld digital devices

• Synthesized findings into a report on the use of handheld digital devices to support healthcare in developing countries

Information Systems Project Manager, VillageReach, Seattle, WA (Oct. ’07–Sept. ’08) • Designed and managed the development of a management information system (MIS) to track

the last‐mile distribution of vaccines and medical supplies to 251 clinics in rural Mozambique • Conducted iterative usability tests with multiple user groups in Seattle, WA, and the Cabo

Delgado and Nampula provinces of Mozambique • Designed MIS reports to support multiple user groups in decision‐making from the clinic

level to the national level • Demonstrated the MIS at the Ministry of Health national offices in Maputo, Mozambique,

securing support for a nationwide rollout of the system

Information Systems Intern, Mercy Corps, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (June ’07–Sept. ’07) • Researched user needs for an MIS to support the third‐largest microfinance program in

Kyrgyzstan (49 offices nationwide, serving over 31,000 customers) • Created 99 pages of MIS module descriptions used to build the system • Produced a recommendation report regarding the role of the newly created communication

department, basing recommendations on more than 15 internal interviews, as well as external research



Teaching Experience Teaching Assistant, University of Washington, (Sept. ’07–Dec. ’07) Technical Communication Systems

• Co‐taught master’s level evening students for one quarter • Work included organizing and scheduling the four‐hour class period, teaching and

presenting, identifying additional class readings, maintaining the class wiki, guiding student projects, and meeting with individual students

Instructor, University of Washington, Seattle, WA (Sept. ’06–June ’07) Advanced Technical Writing and Oral Presentation

• Taught for three consecutive quarters; approximately 23‐25 undergraduate engineering majors per class

• Work included planning lessons, teaching classes, grading assignments, and meeting with individual students

Publications Walton, R. & Kolko, B. E. (in review). E‐health in a global context: Designing solutions that span

geographies. Submitted to the Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication. Walton, R. & Kolko, B. E. (in press; 2009, July 19‐22). From zero to 2.4 Ghz: Leapfrogging in technology

adoption for business practices. Proceedings from Professional Communication Conference, IPCC 2009. IEEE International.

Walton, R. & DeRenzi, B. (in press; 2009). Value‐sensitive design and health care in Africa. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication: 52(4).

Walton, R. (2007, October 1‐3). Technical communication and the needs of small nonprofit organizations. Proceedings from Professional Communication Conference, IPCC 2007. IEEE International, pp. 1 – 24.

Walton, R. (2005, March). Updating internal process documentation. Intercomm, pp. 20‐21.

Conference Posters & Presentations Hozumi, D. & Walton, R. (2008, September 18‐19). Factors for successful adaptation of handheld digital

devices for health systems in low‐income countries. Presented at the Global Public Health Informatics 2008 international conference.

Walton, R. & Haselkorn, M. (2008, January 7–10) Humanitarian service science and engineering. Presented at the National Science Foundation Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation Engineering Research and Innovation Conference.

Walton, R., Haselkorn, M., & Kemp, R. (2007, October 1‐3). Engineering Human Communication in Multi‐Institutional Safety and Security Systems. Panel presentation at the Professional Communication Conference, IPCC 2007.

Walton, R. (2007, March 21). How can I help you: Technical communication and the needs of small nonprofit organizations. Presented at the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing 2007 national conference.

Research & Design Approaches User‐centered design Ecological systems design Usability research Participatory design Ethnography Cognitive work analysis Value‐sensitive design Grounded theory



Honors & Awards • Borman Family Foundation Grant (2007) • PhD Teaching Fellowship (2006‐2009) • Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society (2006) • Merit Award, Society for Technical Communication Lone Star Competition (2005) • Team of the Year Award, Williams‐Pyro, Inc. (2005) • Society for Technical Communication Lone Star Chapter Scholarship (2005) • Employee of the Year Nomination, Williams‐Pyro, Inc. (2003, 2004) • University Scholar Award (1999) • Best Copy Editor Award, Optimist (1999) • Women for ACU Scholarship (1997) • Abilene Christian University President’s List and Dean’s List (1995‐1999) • Abilene Christian University Academic Scholarship (1995‐1999) • Clyde High School Salutatorian (1995)

Professional Service • Guest co‐editor, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication special issue on professional

communication in humanitarian environments (in press, Dec. ’09) • Reviewer, Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management International

Conference, ISCRAM 2009 (Feb. 2009) • Student Member, Departmental Task Force on Visioning and Naming (Sept. ’08–Dec. ’08) • Coordinator, NSF‐sponsored Humanitarian Service Science and Engineering Workshop

(Oct. ’07) • Student Member, Department Chair Search Committee (Sept. ’07–Dec. ’07)

Industry Experience Technical Writing Manager, Williams‐Pyro, Inc., Fort Worth, TX (Feb. ’05–May ’06)

• Supervised technical writing team (coordinated workload and schedule, led process review and improvements that increased efficiency and productivity)

• Created and managed company‐wide project report and proposal schedule • Led team to develop company‐wide processes and process documentation (grant‐writing

process, company style guide) • Led development of quarterly newsletter (planned content with executive managers,

designed layout, coordinated content development and production) • Wrote and edited grant proposals, press releases, web content, and presentations

Technical Writer, Williams‐Pyro, Inc., Fort Worth, TX (April ’01–Feb. ’05) • Wrote, edited, and submitted grant proposals worth $4 million annually • Wrote and designed presentations, newsletters, and manuals • Wrote web content, press releases, and speeches • Conducted basic market research on market size, competitors, and products

Project Coordinator, Herald of Truth, Abilene, TX (Aug. ’99–April ’01) • Planned and managed website development and video production • Produced print pieces (edited content, designed layout, submitted bid requests, approved

proofs) • Supervised two part‐time employees



References Mark P. Haselkorn Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering CCI Lead, National Center for Border Security and Immigration Director, Interdisciplinary Program on Humanitarian Relief Loew 14, Box 352195 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195 206.543.2577 [email protected]

Beth E. Kolko Associate Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering Professional Investigator for the Central Asia ICT Project College of Engineering University of Washington Loew 14, Box 352195 Seattle, WA 98195 206.685.3809 [email protected]

Weyns IT Dependability in Emergency Management


Process Improvement for Dependability of IT Systems in Emergency Management - Application to

the 2009 ISCRAM PhD Colloquium

Kim Weyns Lund University

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

In recent years governmental actors have become more and more dependent on IT systems for their responsibilities crisis situations. To avoid unexpected problems with the dependability of IT systems in the aftermath of a crisis it is important that such risks are identified and that measures can be taken to reduce the dependence on systems that could be unreliable. This risk and vulnerability analysis is a complex process, requiring the cooperation of many stakeholders such as emergency managers, system managers, IT personnel, suppliers and end users. In many organisations, problems with this cooperation are common, leading to IT dependability problems during critical operations.

My research focuses on the development of a process improvement model of how organizations with an active role in crisis relief incorporate IT dependability in their emergency management. This maturity model is meant to help organizations to identify, evaluate and improve their IT dependability processes. At present a first complete version of our maturity model has been developed based on a series of case studies to identify the current state of practice and the most common problems. Currently this model is being updated based on feedback from a number experts and experienced practitioners. At the same time we are starting up a series of case studies to evaluate the model in a practical setting, at a number of Swedish governmental actors.

CONTRIBUTION TO THE 2009 ISCRAM PHD COLLOQUIUM

By attending the 2009 ISCRAM PhD Colloquium I hope to get in contact with other PhD students in the same field. It would be interesting to discuss what their experience is of the use of IT systems in emergency management, especially concerning dependability. My research has mostly focused on the Swedish emergency management system, and it would also be interesting to discuss the differences and similarities with other countries.

Further I think I could contribute to the discussions on the symposium by making sure that dependability is not forgotten when new IT systems for emergency systems are being discussed. Often when new systems are being deployed, they are thought of as an extra asset that can speed up the emergency relief process, but because all the old procedures are still in place and because the system is still being evaluated, the system is not a critical component of the emergency management process. But after some successful use of the system, the systems become fully integrated in the emergency plans and the organisation becomes more and more dependent on the system. Because this evolution can go quite fast and because the systems are very complex, their dependability might never get thoroughly evaluated and this



can lead to critical IT dependability problems when these systems are most needed. This is an issue that I think deserves more attention and would be very interesting to discuss with other PhD students in the field.

RESEARCH STATEMENT

Background

In the aftermath of a crisis, governmental actors have an important role in the relief and recovery efforts. During the last decade most governmental actors have become more dependent on software systems, both for their normal everyday tasks and for their roles in emergency situations. And for these tasks they often depend on both specially designed critical systems (such as the communication systems for emergency services) and normal commercial systems (such as the public telephone networks).

This need for a high availability during extreme conditions poses special requirements on the dependability of their IT systems. For a government actor to evaluate its dependence on different IT systems requires a coordinated risk analysis, taking into account the effects of possible crises on those systems and an estimate of the reliability of these systems under crisis conditions (Weyns and Runeson, 2006).

The overall goal of my research is the development of methods for evaluating the dependability of IT systems during emergency situations, to help organisations prevent unexpected dependability problems when these IT systems are most critical.

Completed Research

The evaluation of the reliability of IT systems in extraordinary situations is very hard. Many of the possible extreme events in which a system is critical hopefully never happen in the whole lifetime of the system. Often the only historical data that is available is either from some few very specific crises or from emergency exercises conducted. These exercises can only achieve a limited level of realism, and are usually expensive to conduct. While the collection of data is very slow, the IT systems change very often, and the effect of these changes on the dependability of the system is not always clear. The first part of my research has therefore focussed on theoretical models to measure and predict the sensitivity of software reliability to changes in a systems usage (Weyns and Runeson, 2007).

During the last year, my research has been much more focussed on practical methods that can help organisations of today evaluate and improve the way they incorporate IT dependability information in their emergency management. To be able to develop such methods, further study in to the current state of practice was necessary to identify the main problem areas in this field today.

Through two case studies with two Swedish municipalities and with the help of a broader survey we examined the current methods used and the problems these organisations are experiencing when trying to include IT dependability information in their emergency management. For the case studies data was collected through interviews with both IT personnel and emergency managers and through collecting documents such as emergency plans and IT policy documents.



This study (Weyns and Höst, 2009) clearly showed that the core of the problem today does not lie with either the IT systems themselves or the emergency management procedures, but the real problem is the lack of good cooperation to discuss IT dependability in emergency situations on a strategic level with all involved parties. Therefore, those responsibilities that lie on the border between different people's areas of responsibility are often given too little attention. This leads to emergency planning that does not incorporate possible dependability problems with IT systems and IT management that does not take into account the special conditions that can occur during emergency situations. These kind of problems cannot be solved by simple measures and require a process improvement effort that involves a large part of the organisation. The detailed results of this study will be presented at the 2009 ISCRAM conference.

Current and Future Research

Currently we are developing a process improvement model that can help organisations evaluate and improve the cooperation between IT personnel, emergency or safety managers and users of critical systems to include IT dependability information in an organisation’s emergency management.

The model will be a maturity model, based upon other process improvement models already used in related fields (Fleming, 2001, Luftman, 2003). A maturity model is a framework for process improvement that includes a number of maturity levels that can be used to evaluate and improve the capabilities of an organisation. Figure 1 presents a basic representation of our proposed maturity model. Figure 2 presents a more detailed description of an organisation across the 5 maturity levels according to the 4 categories of attributes used in our model.



Figure 1. Basic representation of the five levels of the maturity model

Figure 2. Summary of the 5 maturity levels across the 4 categories of attributes

The maturity model has been developed based on the input from the earlier case studies. Further, the model has been further updated based upon feedback from different researchers and practitioners, both in the field of emergency management and IT management. Nearly all reactions to the model have been very positive and considerable interest in putting the model in to practice has been shown.

The next step in our research is to evaluate our model in a practical setting through case studies at Swedish governmental actors. This evaluation is a long term research project, during which first parts of the maturity model, and then the whole of the model will be applied by different organisations. The evaluation of a maturity model is a complex task, which requires large amounts of empirical data collected over a longer period of time. Further research is also necessary to examine to which extent these results can be generalised to an international setting.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The work is funded by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (originally the Swedish Emergency Management Agency) under grant for FRIVA, Framework programme for Risk and Vulnerability Analysis of Technological and Social Systems.



REFERENCES

1. Fleming, M. (2001) Safety culture maturity model. Offshore Technology Report, 2000/049.

2. Luftman, J. N. (2003) Managing the Information Technology Resource: Leadership in the Information Age, Prentice-Hall.

3. Weyns, K. & Höst, M (2009) Dependability of IT Systems in Municipal Emergency Management, to be presented at ISCRAM 2009

4. Weyns, K. & Runeson, P (2006) Software Dependability under Emergency Conditions, Extended Abstract, Presented at The 17t h IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2006), Government Track

5. Weyns, K. & Runeson, P (2007) Sensitivity of Software System Reliability to Usage Profile Changes, Proceedings of the 2007 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing

Kim Weyns

Vildandsvagen 4 T:306227 34 Lund

(home) 046-211 24 89(mobile) 0768-80 94 67

[email protected]

Education

• PhD Studies in Computer Science, 2005-2010 (ongoing), Lund University, Department of ComputerScience, within the FRIVA (Framework Programme for Risk and Vulnerability Analysis) project financedby the Swedish Emergency Management Agency

Publications and Presentations:

– Dependability of IT systems in Emergency Situations – Theory and Practice, Licentiate Thesis, 2008

– Software Dependability under Emergency Conditions, ISSRE 2006 - The 17th IEEE InternationalSymposium on Software Reliability Engineering - Government Track, Raleigh, 2006

– Sensitivity of Website Reliability to Usage Profile Changes, The 18th IEEE International Symposiumon Software Reliability Engineering, Trollhttan, 2007

– Sensitivity of Software System Reliability to Usage Profile Changes, The 22nd Annual ACM Sympo-sium on Applied Computing, Seoul, 2007

Teaching:

– Introduction to Software Engineering: Methodology, 2006-2009

– Software Development for Large Systems, 2005-2007

• Master of Science and Engineering in Computer Science, 1999-2004, Catholic University of Leu-ven, Final grade: summa cum laude (85%) .Specialisation: Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence

– Master Thesis: Cycle and Transient lengths in 1D Cellular Automata, 2004, Grade: summa cumlaude (90%)

Work Experience

• Development of software for the chemical industry, Extraction De Smet (Belgium), summers 2001-2003Development of software to design oil crystalizers, implemented in VBasic.

• Administrative work, Extraction De Smet (Belgium), summers of 1998-2000

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Achievements

• Active Member of BEST Leuven, 2000-2004BEST, Board of European Student of Technology, is an international student organisation for engineeringstudents, present at more than 60 european universities.

• Financial responsible for the organization of the 9th BEST Presidents Meeting, Natoye (Bel-gium) 2003BEST has two general meetings per year. One of them is called the Presidents Meeting. In 2003 it wasorganised in Belgium, bringing 130 students from all over Europe together to discuss about the internalworkings of BEST. As financial responsible, I was responsible for gathering and managing a budget ofaround 30.000 euros.

• Treasurer of BEST Leuven, 2002-2003As Treasurer of a local BEST group I was responsible for managing the incomes and outcomes of the groupwith an annual budget of around 8.000 euro. The treasurer is also a member of the executive board of thelocal BEST group.

• Responsible for the organisation of a BEST cultural exchange Lund-Leuven, 2002-2003

• Active in the BEST Information Technologies Committee, 2001-2002 This committee is respon-sible for development and maintenance of the web-based IT services of BEST.

Language Skills

Dutch mother tongueEnglish very fluent, daily active useSwedish very good, daily active useFrench goodGerman understanding: very good, speaking/writing: basic

A little about myself...

• Age: 26

• Personal QualitiesMy best friends describe me as an optimistic, reliable and creative person, fitting into new situations easily.I like to work in a group, preferably in an international environment and I don’t like working inefficiently.

• HobbiesIn my free time I enjoy spending time with my family, playing different sports and games, reading books,going hiking and cooking. I also enjoy travelling and getting to know new people, countries, languages andcultures.

References

Available on request.

March, 2009

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Call for Applications The 6th International Conference on

Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Ph.D. Colloquium

Overview The goal of the Ph.D. Colloquium of the ISCRAM 2009 conference is to develop and sustain a network of young scholars conducting high quality research in the area of Information Systems for crisis response and management. Accomplishment of this goal is supported through a one-day program—taking place immediately prior to the main ISCRAM conference—that is designed to foster community, excellence in student scholarship and advancement in the profession. The colloquium is targeted towards those students seeking careers as researchers in academic settings. It is an excellent opportunity for students to discuss their research with other students and to gain feedback from established researchers in the field of emergency and crisis management. Up to twelve students will be accepted for the colloquium . They will be joined by faculty mentors from the US and Europe who are actively involved in the ISCRAM community and in ISCRAM-related scholarship: • Narjes Bellamine-Ben Saoud, Université de la Manouba; • Julie Dugdale, University of Grenoble 2; • Simon French, University of Manchester; • Rego Granlund, Linköping University; • David Mendonça, New Jersey Institute of Technology; • Raj Sharman, University at Buffalo. The colloquium will consist of discussions, presentations and shared activities on each of the following topics: the Ph.D. process, finding—or defining—your research community, publishing your work, and writing successful grant proposals. Feedback will be provided on the content and methodology of accepted students’ work based on their application packages. Additionally, work by student participants will be presented in a poster session open to main conference attendees.

Eligibility • Those doctoral students who—at the time of the colloquium —have not yet defended their dissertation

are eligible to apply. • Student participants must register for the main conference (a student rate is available).

Logistics The colloquium will be held on 10 May 2009, from 9:00–16:00 in Göteborg, Sweden, immediately prior to the ISCRAM main conference (11–13 May 2009). Göteborg may be reached by direct flights from a number of European cities, and indirectly from others via Copenhagen airport. See http://www.goteborg.com/ for details.

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How to Apply To apply, send an email message to [email protected] by 1 March 2009, as follows: put “doctoral colloquium application” in the subject line, include a brief note in the body of the message stating that you are applying to the symposium, and attach a single file containing the following items: • an abstract of less than 250 words summarizing the proposed research and its potential significance to

scholarship on the topic. • A research statement of 750 to 1500 words describing the proposed thesis research in greater detail

(e.g., methodology, any interim results, expected contributions). Note that the word limit does not include references but does include tables and figures.

• A personal statement of less than 250 words describing what you expect to contribute to and receive from the colloquium.

• A current curriculum vitae. List institutions attended and degrees received, including any degrees in progress. Also list publications, grants awarded, teaching and service activities, and any other information you feel is pertinent.

Note: the abstracdt and research statement must be formatted in accordance with the template for the colloquium, which is downloadable from website of the main ISCRAM conference (see http://www.iscram.org). The file name should be your last name, and the file format should be Adobe PDF2.

Important Dates 11 March 2009 Application due (note new date) 15 March 2009 Decision on application. If successful, participants should prepare a poster

of their work and a digital photo for the roster, to be submitted by 1 April 2009.

10 May 2009 Ph.D. Colloquium 11-13 May 2009 ISCRAM main conference (including poster exhibition)

Questions and Further Information Additional information on the colloquium is available at www.iscram.org. Questions should be sent to the chair (David Mendonça) and co-chair (Julie Dugdale) at [email protected].

2 A number of free MS Word to Adobe PDF are available on the web. However, if for some reason it is not possible to send a single PDF file, a single ZIP file of an MS Word or OpenOffice Writer document may be submitted.

here (, 8mb)

Documents