Information Sharing Among Disaster Responders - An Interactive Spreadsheet-Based Collaboration Approach

Recent natural disasters have led crisis management organizations to revise their protocols so as to rely on the contribution of a wider range of actors, including simple citizens as well as expert operators, to support decision making activities. Reliable and timely information sharing among members of distributed teams of disaster responders has become paramount for the success of the overall crisis management process. In this paper we propose a crisis management system based on spreadsheet-mediated collaboration among on-site responders and decision makers. To share data a common spreadsheet artifact has been developed by using a participatory design approach which is accessed through mobile user interfaces. The evaluation results showed that the use of the spreadsheet artifact has resulted in more effective decision making relating to set of earthquake management scenarios in high-risk areas located in Italy.     

Can crisis management teams mitigate COVID-19's effects? A comparative case study between China and the United States

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the world's greatest challenge since World War II. As an unprecedented global public health crisis, crisis management teams (CMTs) in the infected countries need to rethink to cope with the similar uncertainty and urgency of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The shared context of COVID-19 allows us to explore a cross-nation study of different constructs and CMT to communicate information about crises with the public effectively. Since the pandemic affected all countries, the comparison is warranted. Can CMTs mitigate the effects of COVID-19? Based on the analysis of China and the US cases, our study explores how shared and common knowledge cognition among crisis responders plays a pivotal role in effective CMTs' communication while technological failures and inadequate information disrupt the system, worsening pandemics like COVID-19. Furthermore, organizational dysfunction, such as institutional fragmentation, regulatory hurdles and bureaucratic arrogance, impede effective communication between CMTs. However, effective coordination and decisive leadership could improve coordination effectiveness and reduce crisis costs.     

Creating corroborated crisis reports from social media data through formal concept analysis

During a crisis citizens reach for their smart phones to report, comment and explore information surrounding the crisis. These actions often involve social media and this data forms a large repository of real-time, crisis related information. Law enforcement agencies and other first responders see this information as having untapped potential. That is, it has the capacity extend their situational awareness beyond the scope of a usual command and control centre. Despite this potential, the sheer volume, the speed at which it arrives, and unstructured nature of social media means that making sense of this data is not a trivial task and one that is not yet satisfactorily solved; both in crisis management and beyond. Therefore we propose a multi-stage process to extract meaning from this data that will provide relevant and near real-time information to command and control to assist in decision support. This process begins with the capture of real-time social media data, the development of specific LEA and crisis focused taxonomies for categorisation and entity extraction, the application of formal concept analysis for aggregation and corroboration and the presentation of this data via map-based and other visualisations. We demonstrate that this novel use of formal concept analysis in combination with context-based entity extraction has the potential to inform law enforcement and/or humanitarian responders about on-going crisis events using social media data in the context of the 2015 Nepal earthquake.     

Crisis management using MAS-based wireless sensor networks

Wireless communication is increasingly used to manage large-scale crises (e.g., natural disasters or a large-scale city fire). Communication has traditionally been based on cellular networks. However, real-life experience has proven that the base stations of these networks may collapse or become unreachable during a crisis. An incident commander must also know as much information as possible about the occurring events to control them quickly and efficiently. This paper thus proposes a crisis management approach that overcomes the problems encountered by the base stations and insures relevant, rich and real-time information about events. This approach is based on wireless sensor networks, which are distributed in nature with no need for infrastructure and could be deployed in dangerous and inaccessible zones to gather information. Our proposal uses a multi-agent system as a software layer. The multi-agent system aims to improve the wireless sensor network performance by allowing cooperation between sensor nodes, offering better lifetime management and virtualizing the application layer. This virtualization supports several required applications simultaneously, including event monitoring and object tracking. Through successive simulations, we prove the importance of our approach in crisis management using several criteria to estimate the position’s error in object tracking, end-to-end delay and wireless sensor network lifetime management.     

Communication Gaps in Disaster Management: Perceptions by Experts from Governmental and Non‐Governmental Organizations

The complexity of current disasters creates a challenge for crisis communication. This paper aims at identifying gaps in communication in disaster management experienced in practice in order to facilitate learning from those situations. The research was conducted using a qualitative online open‐ended questionnaire. It shows that despite the developments in the discipline, communication as an integral part of decision making in disaster management needs to be further developed. The paper provides a practical‐oriented overview of the communication constraints in complex crisis situations, which has not been provided so far. This research is part of an international project developing performance indicators for a quality measurement system for crisis communication.     

Facebook and Twitter in Crisis Communication: A Comparative Study of Crisis Communication Professionals and Citizens

This mixed‐methods study presents a comparative analysis of the use and perceived usefulness of Facebook and Twitter, among Swedish citizens and crisis communication professionals, as crisis communication tools and information sources. The use and perceived usefulness of Facebook and Twitter are not congruent and consistent between the two different groups, according to the overall study. Communication professionals, for example, report higher levels of perceived usefulness regarding Facebook's potential as a crisis communication tool than do the citizens. Taken together, the results show that researchers (within social media and crisis communication) and crisis managers both need to deal with the fact that social media is not a homogenous phenomenon with a single coherent role in crisis management and communication research and practice.     

Characterizing the role of Weibo and WeChat in sharing original information in a crisis

Strategically differentiated managerial evidence of different social media platforms is of great importance to enhance crisis communication processes by balancing their strengths and weaknesses. This study aims to uncover the platform-specific situational information-sharing characteristics by differentiating the major types of information published in Weibo and WeChat during different phases of a crisis. The subject of the study is the Changsheng fake vaccine crisis which happened in China in 2018. Multiple supervised machine learning and topic modelling methods are used for the characterization of situational information types of the crisis during three phases in both platforms. Our study found that WeChat shares more situational information such as notifications, caution and advice, and criticizing information, whereas Weibo shares more emotional support and help-seeking information. This study provides social media analytics and empirical evidence of platform-specific situational information-sharing characteristics to aid authorities/researchers for better crisis communication and public emergency management.     

Enhancing Knowledge Management and Decision-Making Capability of China’s Emergency Operations Center Using Big Data

Emerging communication and computing technologies such as social media, Internet of Things and big data provide great opportunities to improve information management systems for emergency operations. This paper studies the issues of information management at China’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), and proposes a data-driven knowledge management system (KMS) to support decisionmaking, coordination, and collaboration within EOCs and with the public. In the proposed KMS, big data analytics is employed to gather and analyze information from different knowledge domains and track how a crisis evolves in physical world and in cyber space. The proposed system aims at improving situation awareness of public opinions and regulating human behaviors in regards to an emergency. A case study is presented to explain how the proposed system is applied to improve decision-making during emergency.     

“Epidemic in Switzerland”: Description of a Strategic Leadership Exercise by the Swiss Government

On January 20, 2005, a national strategic leadership exercise was held in Switzerland. The theme being the first day response to an epidemic outbreak. Special attention was paid to cooperation and coordination among the various federal departments, the definition of responsibilities within the leadership organisation, and the level of information and communication that served the leadership process, and how these elements played out under time pressure, during a crisis situation and within a federal and international setting. The evaluation of this exercise concludes that short term crisis management could be considered as adequate but strategic decision making was mostly absent. The value of this large scale exercise is considered positive for the preparation on crisis management because of heightened political attention which for example is visible in the swift implementation of the recommendations of the evaluation.     

Good Enough is Good Enough: Overcoming Disaster Response Organizations’ Slow Social Media Data Adoption

Organizations that respond to disasters hold unreasonable standards for data arising from technology-enabled citizen contributions. This has strong negative potential for the ability of these responding organizations to incorporate these data into appropriate decision points. We argue that the landscape of the use of social media data in crisis response is varied, with pockets of use and acceptance among organizations. In this paper we present findings from interviews conducted with representatives from large international disaster response organizations concerning their use of social media data in crisis response. We found that emergency responders already operate with less than reliable, or “good enough,” information in offline practice, and that social media data are useful to responders, but only in specific crisis situations. Also, responders do use social media, but only within their known community and extended network. This shows that trust first begins with people and not data. Lastly, we demonstrate the barriers used by responding organizations have gone beyond discussions of trustworthiness and data quality to that of more operational issues.     

‘Breaking’ news: uncovering sense-breaking patterns in social media crisis communication during the 2017 Manchester bombing

ABSTRACT

Individuals, (media-) organisations, and crisis responders who are involved in ad hoc crisis communication steadily deploy social media to contribute to collective sense-making as an endeavour to create meaning in highly uncertain situations. Exerting sense-giving in order to shape others’ conceptions is causally preceded by an initial breakup of existing understanding. This study aims to explore patterns of sense-breaking in social media crisis communication and its impact on collective sense-making and sense-giving. To this end, we conducted a case study of the Manchester bombing in 2017, including a social network analysis of 708,147 Twitter postings and a content analysis of 2006 original tweets. We found individual role types to be initiators of sense-breaking in early crisis stages when uncertainty is at its height. Exerting successive sense-giving becomes more challenging if the collective sense-making has progressed along with the sequence of events. This understanding aims to encourage emergency management organisations to move their sense-giving actions closer to the point in time when sense-breaking occurs.     

Terrorism Communication: Characteristics and Emerging Perspectives in the Scientific Literature 2002–2011

This paper aims to clarify current knowledge on the contribution of communication to crisis management in the case of terrorism incidents. This is done by means of a systematic review of the scientific literature on terrorism communication over the last 10 years to identify the many challenges facing communication in such crises, and represents the first attempt of its kind. To date, within the literature on terrorism communication, much attention has been paid to chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear hazards. Terrorism crises are complex and challenging. Preparedness for such diverse low‐probability high‐impact crises can best be included in a wider educative approach. Terrorism crises call for fast information updates that, using a multi‐channel approach, can be tailored to fit different needs and (social) media habits.     

Reactive Crisis Management in Constructive Projects — Patterns of Communication and Behaviour

Patterns of communication and behaviour emerge within a construction project in response to a construction crisis. This paper investigates, within a grounded theory framework, the nature of these patterns, the sociological and psychological forces which shape them and their relationship with crisis management efficiency. A grounded theory is presented in four parts. The first part conceives a construction crisis as a period of social instability, arising from conflicting interest groups, seeking to exercise power in the pursuit of social structures which suit their political and economic interests. The second part sees a construction crisis as a de-sensitizing phenomenon which results in a period of behavioural instability and conflict which is self-perpetuating. The third part cites social structure as an important influence upon construction crisis management efficiency, in determining the efficiency of information flow, and the level of uncertainty between those affected. The fourth part points to the in-built defence mechanisms which construction crises have and to three managerial ironies which make construction crisis management difficult.     

Interacting with VDL-based structured icons on crisis map for emergency coordination: Interactive design and experimental demonstration

Accurate and timely information sharing among multiple participants is one of the crucial factors for collaboration in crisis management. The icon-based map was frequently applied as an effective means for crisis interaction and collaboration. However, former studies only regarded the icons as supplementary visualization components during the whole crisis collaboration process. In this paper, the concept of a structured-icon-relied interactive method was proposed to directly integrate all kinds of crisis and coordination information through icons on the crisis map. Moreover, structured icons are supposed to explicitly show the correlation among crisis information and to improve the interactive experience of information search. The effectiveness of this interactive method was verified by a controlled experiment with three sub-tasks for simulated crisis rescue. The results of the experiment showed that the design of the crisis map based on structured icons had a positive impact on collaborative decision-making and crisis interaction. The dynamic characteristics of the structured icon could represent the temporal and spatial attributes of crisis information and enhance users’ crisis coordination ability. The study aims to enrich the theory of crisis information visualization and interaction based on structured iconic representation. In practice, this research could optimize the design of a crisis collaboration system based on the icon as well as the interaction between people, crisis information, and collaborative system, which in turn provides accurate and timely rescue decisions.     

Quality Indicators for Crisis Communication to Support Emergency Management by Public Authorities

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for performance indicators to measure and improve crisis communication preparedness of public authorities. Such an instrument supporting organizational learning has not yet been developed for crisis communication. Literature is used to create a basis and the framework is derived from a process model with various phases integrating communication activities with crisis management. In the paper, the development of the instrument is explained and justified. Furthermore, an example of its use is provided in which the instrument is used for an auditor evaluation of a water contamination case. A next step for future research could be to analyze and compare a number of measurements.     

Bordering on Reality: Findings on the Bonfire Crisis Management Simulation

On 6 April 2005 a national crisis management simulation, code named Bonfire, was held at various locations in the Netherlands. The Bonfire scenario was built around a terrorist threat followed by an actual attack in the Amsterdam ArenA and a hostage‐taking. Bonfire's scale and realism made it unique for the Netherlands. Its complexity led to unplanned incidents that actually made it even more realistic, because this is something that occurs in every crisis situation. This evaluation shows that the co‐ordination, internal provision of information and crisis communication – the three core elements of crisis management discussed in this report –were mainly in the hands of the decision‐makers themselves. This put so much pressure on them that they were rarely able to make strategic decisions for the medium or long term. Support staff had been expected to ease pressure on the leadership by preparing their meetings and working out the results. This did not go as planned, however. Since they did not always have access to the latest information, they could not provide optimum support. As a result, they were by‐passed, so that they had even less access to information. The vicious circle was thus complete. It was observed that new counter‐terrorism structures installed in the Netherlands after ‘9–11’ functioned as foreseen, but that decision‐making required the input of far more parties than had been envisaged. In the course of the operations, therefore, the various levels established a more or less spontaneous link with the standard crisis management structures.     

机器人生产线的网络信息管理及监控系统

本文介绍一个以机器人生产线为背景的网络信息管理及监控系统的设计与实现．该系统由网络实时通信，监控技术及信息管理，计算机与机器人系统的信息交互平台３部分组成．信息交互平台保证计算机与不同的机器人之间实现灵活的、实时的数据传输．网络通信层以客户／服务器模式来设计，并考虑网络通信的实时性，以满足客户对不同信息源的需求．监控技术及信息管理则在上述平台上，以网络为中心，实现对现场生产线的监控及信息管理．整个系统的设计，将监控过程与信息管理融为一体，体现出系统集成的思想     

Initial Crisis Agent‐Response Impact Syndrome (ICARIS)

There has been a dramatic shift in attitude among organizations regarding the probabilities of crisis occurring. Once crises were considered the domain of the contingency management team that sought the fastest means to recovery, now the entire organization is compelled to take steps intended to mitigate conditions leading to a crisis. In this paper, the authors consider the organization's ‘first responders’ i.e., those who become involuntarily placed in the decision making process because they are the first to become aware of the conditions which indicate impending crisis simply because they are ‘on scene.’ As agents of the organization, these persons will make initial decisions well before the implementation of any formal contingency plan and because their decisions will be based on incomplete assumptions, they are likely to be in error. The impact of these initial crisis‐agent responses can cause irreparable damage to the organization, to the individuals within the organization, and to the surrounding environment. This tendency toward error is referred to as the initial crisis‐agent response impact syndrome: ICARIS. Exercising a program that prepares all employees for the initial decisions that need to be made at the moment of crisis can mitigate problems related to this issue.     

基于RFID技术的停车场通讯系统的设计

提出红外通讯与无线通讯结合在停车场通讯系统中,为了克服目前停车场通讯系统中,相邻车道之问无线通讯的相互干扰,该通讯系统引进具有方向性特点的红外通讯;设计了功率可控红外发射电路,从而达到停车场通讯系统中车道口的通讯距离可调,采用射频识别技术中的导出密钥的相互鉴别实现数据安全;通过局域网完成各车道口之间以及各车道口与管理中心的信息交换,实现停车场管理的网络化和信息化;实际证明,该通讯系统具有实际的应用价值。     

The dynamic role of social media during Hurricane #Sandy: An introduction of the STREMII model to weather the storm of the crisis lifecycle

Social media has introduced a key ingredient, and a potentially unfamiliar variable, into the practice of crisis communication. In this paper, the authors critically assess the social media milestones related to Hurricane Sandy according to situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) (Coombs, 2007). Further, we discuss the crisis lifecycle of Hurricane Sandy with regard to the potential implementation of the STREMII model of social media crisis management, a proposed model originated through this research application. This original model develops from lessons and best practices discovered in historical and contemporary cases of social media crises and crisis management. The researchers acknowledge potential limitations and describe steps for further development of the model through research, all the while recognizing the powerful and paradoxical role of social media in the crisis management process. In reflection of Hurricane Sandy, further qualitative and quantitative examinations of crisis events are encouraged to evaluate the STREMII model continually in the dynamic social media climate and across the vast facets of crisis communication.