A significant body of social science research has concluded that improvisation in distributed, collaborative, open systems is the key to success in responding to and recovering from extreme events. Regional response and leadership capabilities have been strengthened, while deployable assist teams with skills and resources have been created and investments have been made in information systems to support situational awareness and decision making during disasters.

In “Achieving Agility in Disaster Management ”, an article from the most recent issue of the International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response Management (Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Murray E. Jennex, San Diego State University, USA and Dr. Bartel Van de Walle, Tilburg University, The Netherlands), researcher Dr. John R. Harrald, Virginia Polytechnic and State University (USA), explores how agility can be developed within a disciplined system to support collaborative sense-making and decision making in open, organizational systems.

“Our selection, training, and education systems must be able to produce leaders capable of enabling creative improvisation within networked, collaborative environments,” writes Harrald. “Both the vision and the leadership will operate in an open organizational environment with organizations and individuals entering and leaving the system in unanticipated ways.”

According to Harrald, the achievement of agility in disaster response will require a significant change in how we prepare for and respond to extreme events. New technology must support such an environment to enable the system to collaboratively and effectively engage in sense making and decision making with these unexpected circumstances.

(Portions of this article were taken from the International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response Management - Editor-in-Chief: Murray E. Jennex and Bartel Van de Walle.)