Advances in multi-agency disaster management: Key elements in disaster research

Multi-agency disaster management requires collaboration among geographically distributed public and private organizations to enable a rapid and effective response to an unexpected event. Many disaster management systems often lack the capability to cope with the complexity and uncertainty. In this introduction to the special issues on advances in multi-agency disaster management we discuss the role of information, enterprise architecture, coordination and related human efforts aimed at improving multi-agency disaster management. The paper concludes that although there is a common body of knowledge, disaster management is still an under-developed area. There is a need to relate practice and theory by using human-centered approaches such that disaster management can realize its full potential.     

The Engagement of Website Initial Aesthetic Impressions: An Experimental Investigation

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how website design features, web page order and visual complexity, influence users’ initial website aesthetic impressions and how such impressions subsequently enhance engagement and intention to use the website. A laboratory experiment was conducted to test the hypotheses using different levels of web page order (high vs. low), visual complexity (high vs. low), and exposure time (one-second vs. no-time-constraint). Overall, the results from structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis suggest that web page order significantly influences visual appeal, engagement, and intention. In addition, the results of multigroup SEM analysis reveal that users evaluate website design very quickly (within 1 s), and that these evaluations remain remarkably consistent over time.     

Perceived risks, counter-beliefs, and intentions to use anti-/counter-terrorism websites: An exploratory study of government–citizens online interactions in a turbulent environment

This study examines the relationships between various risks, beliefs, and behavioral intentions that are related to citizens' use of anti-/counter-terrorism e-Government websites. The data was collected through two surveys within a one-year interval — before and after the Iraqi regime was expelled by the US coalition army. The results suggest that perceived privacy risk from an anti/counter-terrorism authority is the major obstacle in citizen-to-government anti/counter-terrorism information flow, while citizens' belief in the authority's domain competence greatly influences citizens' dependence on anti/counter-terrorism website information. Other findings and implications are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested.     

Anatomy of the Information Security Workforce

The information security workforce is one of the fastest growing subgroups in IT, but little is known about the field's characteristics and educational and professional environments. This article reports on a survey that sheds light on the information security workforce's task responsibilities, job market conditions, and training needs. The study's results should help companies, prospective information security professionals, and educational institutions alike understand the issues pertaining to this labor niche and fulfill the increasing labor demands.     

Task complexity and different decision criteria for online service acceptance: A comparison of two e-government compliance service domains

Inspired by ever evolving information technologies and the myriad of successful business cases that reap the benefit of new technologies, many governments around the world have jumped on the bandwagon of electronic government (e-Gov). However, there has been little academic research regarding the types and conditions of e-Gov services that are acceptable to the public. This paper synthesizes a model of e-Gov compliance services acceptance by critically integrating prior research along with the distinctive characteristics of the online government services context. The study posits that different levels of task complexity involved in various e-Gov compliance processes can lead citizens to use different decision criteria and empirically examines the differing acceptance decision patterns of potential e-Government service users in two compliance service domains. The results reveal that citizens do adopt different decision criteria for different levels of task complexity, suggesting that functional usefulness of e-Gov services becomes a more important criterion for online services that involve difficult tasks. In contrast, the service provider's competence in online operations becomes a more important factor for simple tasks. Several other findings and future research directions are also discussed.     

The impact of information security failure on customer behaviors: A study on a large-scale hacking incident on the internet

This research examines the responses of online customers to a publicized information security incident and develops a model of retreative behaviors triggered by such a security incident. The model is empirically tested using survey data from 192 users of a recently compromised website. The results of the data analyses suggest that an information security incident can cause a measurable negative impact on customer behaviors, although the impact seems to be largely limited to that particular website. The tested model of retreative behaviors indicates that perceived damage and availability of alternative shopping sources can significantly increase retreative behaviors of victimized customers, while perceived relative usefulness and ease-of-use of the website show limited effects in reducing such behaviors.     

Utilizing venation features for efficient leaf image retrieval

Most Content-Based Image Retrieval systems use image features such as textures, colors, and shapes. However, in the case of a leaf image, it is not appropriate to rely on color or texture features only as such features are very similar in most leaves. In this paper, we propose a new and effective leaf image retrieval scheme. In this scheme, we first analyze leaf venation which we use for leaf categorization. We then extract and utilize leaf shape features to find similar leaves from the already categorized group in a leaf database. The venation of a leaf corresponds to the blood vessels in organisms. Leaf venations are represented using points selected by a curvature scale scope corner detection method on the venation image. The selected points are then categorized by calculating the density of feature points using a non-parametric estimation density. We show this technique’s effectiveness by performing several experiments on a prototype system.     

Challenges and obstacles in sharing and coordinating information during multi-agency disaster response: Propositions from field exercises

Although various scholars have researched issues regarding disaster management, few have studied the sharing and coordinating of information during disasters. Not much empirical data is available in this field and there is sparse insight into the factors that may impede or facilitate information sharing and coordination among stakeholders. In this paper, we provide an overview of the relevant obstacles and challenges by examining existing literature and then investigating a series of multi-agency disaster management exercises, using observations and a survey. Although all the people who took part in our study agree that sharing information is important, for the success of their own organization as well as the exercise as a whole, the extent to which information is actually being shared among organizations is often limited by a number of factors that can be attributed to the community, agency and individual level. We found that relief workers are often more concerned with receiving information from others than with providing information to others who may benefit. Incentives for sharing information, understanding each other’s work-processes and the usability of information systems have shown positive effects on information sharing and coordination. The findings of our study have been formulated using six grounded propositions, which can be used by system designers and policy-makers upon validation in further research. We also provide directions for future research.