The Emergency Management Information System (EMIS) field has an established tradition of user-centered methodological approaches for design and evaluation research. However, visual analytics, a new... Show More

The Emergency Management Information System (EMIS) field has an established tradition of user-centered methodological approaches for design and evaluation research. However, visual analytics, a new field that is starting to intersect with EMIS, is barely using such approaches. Thus an opportunity has emerged to expand these user-centered approaches from EMIS towards visual analytics via the design of visual analytics tools for emergency management. In this article, the authors present a qualitative methodology for design research that takes on this opportunity. This specific methodology is characterized by using non-participant observation and interviews as methods and by being theoretically informed by the multidisciplinary framework of visual analytics. The authors also include a detailed application of the methodology to the design of visual analytic tools for Emergency Operation Centers in Vancouver, Canada as well as the corresponding results: contextual knowledge for design, informed requirements for four design projects and evaluation criteria for these designs.

Organizations that deal with humanitarian assistance, disaster response and military activities are often exposed to dynamic environments where chaos rules. Under these circumstances, standard... Show More

Organizations that deal with humanitarian assistance, disaster response and military activities are often exposed to dynamic environments where chaos rules. Under these circumstances, standard operating procedures may not be always be applicable, forcing the controllers to resort to opportunistic, or even scrambled, control. The lack of tactical or strategic control forces the teams to rely on experience from scenario-based training and prior missions. Acquiring, and retaining, such experience is thus essential to prepare for future events. Based on ideas from the knowledge management community, this article proposes an externalizable control model, supporting methods for retaining mission experience through internalization via hypermedia. Such a knowledge base of experience can be used to simplify knowledge sharing, an important matter since first-hand experience from rare and extreme events is, naturally, rare. The knowledge base synthesizes actual decision making processes, complete with context, history, cues, and interactions and is captured through a combination of heterogeneous multimedia recordings, sensor readings, and documents relating to the mission. The approach can complement regular training and apprenticeships, to help establish and maintain a pool of knowledge and increase tactical commanders' recognition-primed decision-making capability.

While crises may appear to be event-driven, post-mortem accounts often identify factors that accumulate over time and increase the likelihood of failure. These factors are particularly difficult to... Show More

While crises may appear to be event-driven, post-mortem accounts often identify factors that accumulate over time and increase the likelihood of failure. These factors are particularly difficult to anticipate when multiple organizations are involved in crisis preparation and event detection. Through the development of a systems-based model of crisis management, it was learned that knowledge sharing can be accelerated or inhibited by the development of trust among organizations through the management of events. Is it possible to operationalize this finding? This hypothesis is one of the findings of the SEMPOC project, which examined crisis preparation and mitigation in the hypothetical context of an extended failure in the EU power infrastructure. The knowledge-sharing hypothesis is being tested in the ELITE project, a second activity funded by the EU to develop a multi-national Community of Practice in disaster management.

Emergency evacuation of crowds is a fascinating phenomenon that has attracted researchers from various fields. Better understanding of this class of crowd behavior opens up for improving evacuation... Show More

Emergency evacuation of crowds is a fascinating phenomenon that has attracted researchers from various fields. Better understanding of this class of crowd behavior opens up for improving evacuation policies and smarter design of buildings, increasing safety. Recently, a new class of disruptive technology has appeared: Human-centered sensing which allows crowd behavior to be monitored in real-time, and provides the basis for real-time crowd control. The question then becomes: to what degree can previous crowd models incorporate this development, and what areas need further research? In this paper, the authors provide a survey that describes some widely used crowd models and discuss the advantages and shortages from the angle of human-centered sensing. Their review reveals important research opportunities that may contribute to an improved and more robust emergency management.