Summary of a Workshop on Information Technology Research for Crisis Management (1999) / Chapter Skim
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3 Information Technology Research Opportunities
3 Information Technology Research Opportunities
Pages 25-47
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From page 25... ...
Delivery mechanisms are needed to get appropriate information to the right people. Success in each phase of crisis management depends on successful information management in the preceding phase.
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From page 26... ...
databases and the "ground truth." For example, crisis responders may have access to rough, outdated information on storage facilities of hazardous materials but may lack up-to-date, detailed information about what kind of material a particular building contains, even though such information is known to the operator of an industrial facility. New data management paradigms are needed that would permit geographically and administratively distributed GIS repositories to operate with one another in a more seamless and transparent fashion.
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A number of significant nontechnical barriers impede implementation of solutions, including organizational resistance to sharing data or to interoperating, lack of overall system architectures, security constraints that make information sharing difficult, and both the absence of applicable standards and nonadherence to extant standards.2 In addition, workshop participants identified a number of ways in which research on interoperability and integration could make a significant contribution to improved crisis management. First, given the dynamic, rapidly developing nature of crises, improved techniques for the dynamic discovery of information relevant to a crisis and for the fusion of information from multiple sources are important.
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Given that crisis management depends on the integration of information coming from multiple organizations and government agencies, each of which may have policy constraints regarding confidentiality, a challenge is to develop techniques that permit integration for the purpose of crisis management consistent with maintaining those constraints.
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Geographical Information System Performance An additional area of particular concern noted by workshop participants was the performance of GISs, which play an important role in crisis management. Participants noted that the major database system vendors such as Oracle, IBM, Informix, and NCR are rapidly improving both the functionality and scalability of the spatial capabilities of their standard database products.
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From page 30... ...
Many of the most difficult human-technology interface issues are evident in the initial response stage of crisis management, but some occur in the recovery, mitigation, and preparedness phases as well. (In addition, as discussed below, there are important reasons to use the same tools and interfaces across all these phases.)
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.. Supporting Effective Communications and Coordination In crisis management situations, crisis responders are quickly brought together, both physically and virtually.
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Increased automation was one approach suggested to compensate for decreased capabilities and to reduce stress level. Mixed-initiative systems, which combine features of directly manipulable and agent-based systems, could also support more effective decision making in crisis situations.
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information that is provided to crisis responders. For instance, one of the major problems during crisis response is the transfer of stress among the responders, a self-compounding problem akin to what happens in a noisy restaurant when customers speak louder in an attempt to make themselves heard.
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Workshop participants pointed to the potential represented by the DARPA multilingual interview system developed for use in Bosnia (described in more detail in Box 3.1) in helping crisis responders communicate with citizens not fluent in English.
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The approach can be extended beyond simply making calls over wireline telephones. For instance, the Federal Communications Commission has mandated that cell phone systems be capable of providing accurate information on location.
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Archiving of data generated during a crisis would help with such analysis and would also be an aid to training. Several research suggestions at the workshop centered on audit trails of crisis situations and their use in subsequent training.
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Because one of the goals of collecting audit trails is to test the effectiveness of different communication and information management strategies, it must be possible to reconstruct "flows" of information and determine where information bottlenecks or loss occurred or where delays or error were introduced. Workshop participants also noted that process and workflow techniques could be applied to the response phase of crisis management so as to find ways of capturing and representing "best practices." Of particular interest was finding a way of sharing these practices across administrative domains, which requires finding ways of translating organizationspecific practices into practices that are applicable to a broader set of .
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The global disaster information network, GDIN,5 for example, is a concept for an activity to provide access to disaster information resources, produce integrated information products, and deliver information to decision makers. 5The Disaster Information Task Force, responding to a request from vice President Gore, articulated the GDIN concept in its report Harnessing Information and Technologyfor Disaster Management The Global Disaster Information Network Disaster Information Task Force.
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A research question that addresses this requirement is how to build networks that allow applications to interact with the infrastructure so as to allow the incorporation of capabilities such as priority override features or the recognition and management of information surges during a crisis. Also, because of the need to maximize a crisis responder's ability to utilize communications resources, it would be useful to develop interfaces that allow the combined use of both private and public infrastructure during a crisis, permitting crisis responders to exploit whatever infrastructure elements are available in the aftermath of a
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population today. Complex technical, economic, and policy issues surround the provision of broadband Internet access to residences,6 but deployment via a variety of technologies is proceeding, and it is useful to explore how such capabilities might be used for crisis management.
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Modeling and simulation can be applied to numerous phenomena such as hurricane track and intensity, earthquake damage, and the airborne dispersion of chemicals following an accidental release and they play important roles throughout crisis management activities.7 Some of these roles are listed below: · Planning. Models are used before disasters to help in planning.
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After an earthquake, quickly and directly assessing the extent and distribution of damage is difficult because acquiring and synthesizing damage reports takes considerable time. The initial damage estimates are essential for directing response efforts, as well as estimating requests for federal aid following the disaster.
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A1though, of course, a major research goal is to provide emergency managers with tools to better manage the large volumes of information (such as numerous reports from the field) or the coordination of a multitude of field activities, increased levels of stress are nonetheless an essential element of crisis management.
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technologies are defined broadly to include electronic means for obtaining information on the availability of physical goods, requesting goods, and paying for those goods; methods for entering and processing requests for benefits and paying those benefits; and computer security technologies needed to control the flow of information or protect information from unauthorized modification. In crisis response, the logistics function lends itself to the use of these electronic commerce techniques (even if the supplies are already in the possession of agencies responding to the crisis and if no additional funds will change hands)
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In particular, many of the technologies developed and used extensively in electronic commerce can also be applied to other crisis management needs. The ability to process data from many sources, either through Web pages or though call centers located outside the affected area, can be particularly useful.
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However, the conditional aspect of the policies will limit certain discretion from being applied except in the condition of a declared emergency. Research Opportunities Workshop participants considered the following to be key research opportunities for electronic commerce in crisis management: · Development of technologies and standards for escrow sites where citizens can store important information that they might need to access in a crisis but that might not be available if systems within the affected area are inaccessible.
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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH OPPORTUNTIES 47 conditional delegated authority and mechanisms to allow other kinds of exceptions. · Development of a dynamic trust structure to support ad hoc or instant accreditation of participants with limited authority and limited powers of delegation.
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