Human computer interaction in security and time-critical systems is an interdisciplinary challenge at the seams of human factors, engineering, information systems and computer science. Application... Show More

Human computer interaction in security and time-critical systems is an interdisciplinary challenge at the seams of human factors, engineering, information systems and computer science. Application fields include control systems, critical infrastructures, vehicle and traffic management, production technology, business continuity management, medical technology, crisis management and civil protection. Nowadays in many areas mobile and ubiquitous computing as well as social media and collaborative technologies also plays an important role. The specific challenges require the discussion and development of new methods and approaches in order to design information systems. These are going to be addressed in this special issue with a particular focus on technologies for citizen and volunteers in emergencies.

Recently, rescue worker resources have not been sufficient to meet the regular response time during large-scale catastrophic events in every case. However, many volunteers supported official forces... Show More

Recently, rescue worker resources have not been sufficient to meet the regular response time during large-scale catastrophic events in every case. However, many volunteers supported official forces in different disaster situations, often self-organized through social media. In this paper, a system will be introduced which allows the coordination of trained volunteers by a professional control center with the objective of a more efficient distribution of human resources and technical equipment. Volunteers are contacted via app on their private smartphone. The design of this app is based on user requirements gathered in focus group discussions. The feedback of the potential users includes privacy aspects, low energy consumption, and mechanisms for long-term motivation and training. The authors present the results of the focus group analyses as well as the transfer to their app design concept.

In this paper the authors developed applications for apps in times of crises and critical situations. They analyzed how people act in these situations and how to mitigate their uncertainty and fears... Show More

In this paper the authors developed applications for apps in times of crises and critical situations. They analyzed how people act in these situations and how to mitigate their uncertainty and fears through situation-specific communication. Including these aspects as well as the general challenges of crisis communication, pros and cons of apps based on existing examples were discussed. The resulting requirements for an app for crises and dangerous situations should assist in designing a communication solution that strengthens the feeling of security of citizens in critical times, such as life-threatening situations. This solution is intended as an additional means of communication for emergency services to modernize crisis communication with affected people.

Social media is much just used for private as well as business purposes, obviously, also during emergencies. Emergency services are often confronted with the amount of information from social media... Show More

Social media is much just used for private as well as business purposes, obviously, also during emergencies. Emergency services are often confronted with the amount of information from social media and might consider using them – or not using them. This article highlights the perception of emergency services on social media during emergencies. Within their European research project EMERGENT, the authors therefore conducted an interview study with emergency service staff (N=11) from seven European countries and eight different cities. Their results highlight the current and potential use of social media, the emergency service's participation in research on social media as well as current challenges, benefits and future plans.

The control of technical systems is often defined by standard operating procedures, e.g. provided by paper-based manuals or decision trees. These procedures specify how a human operator should... Show More

The control of technical systems is often defined by standard operating procedures, e.g. provided by paper-based manuals or decision trees. These procedures specify how a human operator should handle a specific situation occurring in the system control, which might also be safety-critical. This work presents a concept of guiding users' gaze in such control scenarios of technical systems, which aims at preventing the user from having to leave the control context in order to consult such a paper-based standard operating procedure. Instead, the presented approach fades in information into the control interface based on the current situation of the system and the intended procedure. The work further argues for the use of this technique in the context of refresher-based training to enhance retrieval of once-learned knowledge. This concept, called gaze guiding, has been implemented in a framework in which it can be applied to existing control interfaces. The feasibility of gaze guiding in such control scenarios is demonstrated in a user study with 21 participants.