research-article

Ad Hoc Participation in Situation Assessment: Supporting Mobile Collaboration in Emergencies

Authors:

Christian Reuter,

Volkmar PipekAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Volume 21, Issue 5

Article No.: 26, Pages 1 - 26

https://doi.org/10.1145/2651365

Published: 21 November 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Emergencies are characterized by high complexity and unpredictability. In order to assess and manage them successfully, improvisation work and informal communication, even beyond local and organizational boundaries, is needed. Such informal practices can facilitate ad hoc participation of units in situation assessment, but this may lack overall situation awareness. This article presents a study on how emergent “collaboration needs” in current work of response teams located on-site and in the control center could be supported by mobile geo-collaboration systems. First, we present the results of an empirical study about informal work and mobile collaboration practices of emergency services. Then we describe the concept of a mobile geo-collaboration system that addresses the aspects detected in the empirical study and that was implemented as an Android application using web sockets, a technology enabling full-duplex ad hoc communication. Finally, we outline the findings of its evaluation in practice and its implications.

References

[1]

A. Adrot and D. Robey. 2008. Information technology, improvisation and crisis response: Review of literature and proposal for theory. In Proceedings of Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS’08).

[2]

F. Bergstrand and J. Landgren. 2011. Visual reporting in time-critical work: exploring video use in emergency response. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI’11). 415--424.

Digital Library

[3]

O. W. Bertelsen and S. Bødker. 2001. Cooperation in massively distributed information spaces. In W. Prinz, M. Jarke, Y. Rogers, K. Schmidt, and V. Wulf (Eds.), Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW’01). Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1--17.

Digital Library

[4]

M. Büscher and P. H. Mogensen. 2007. Designing for material practices of coordinating emergency teamwork. In B. Van De Walle, P. Burghardt, and C. Nieuwenhuis (Eds.), Proceedings of the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM’07). Retrieved September 12, 2014 from http://www.ist-palcom.org/publications/files/ISCRAM_Buscher_Mogensen_final.pdf.

[5]

G. Cai. 2005. Extending distributed GIS to support geo-collaborative crisis management. Geographic Information Science 11, 1, 4--14.

[6]

T. Catarci, M. De Leoni, A. Marrella, M. Mecella, M. Bortenschlager, and R. Steinmann. 2010. The WORKPAD project experience: Improving the disaster response through process management and geo collaboration. In Proceedings of the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM’10).

[7]

R. Chen, R. Sharman, H. R. Rao, and S. J. Upadhyaya. 2008. Coordination in emergency response management. Communications of the ACM 51, 5, 66--73.

Digital Library

[8]

G. Convertino, H. M. Mentis, A. Slavkovic, M. B. Rosson, and J. M. Carroll. 2011. Supporting common ground and awareness in emergency management planning. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 18, 4, 1--34.

Digital Library

[9]

M. R. Endsley. 1995. Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors 37, 1, 32--64.

[10]

B. E. Goldstein. 2011. Collaborative Resilience—Moving Through Crisis to Opportunity. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 376.

[11]

J. Grudin. 2010. CSCW: Time passed, tempest, and time past. Interactions 17, 4, 38--40.

Digital Library

[12]

J. Heard, S. Thakur, J. Losego, and K. Galluppi. 2014. Big board: Teleconferencing over maps for shared situational awareness. Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing (JCSCW) 23, 1, 51--74.

Digital Library

[13]

A. Hevner and S. Chatterjee. 2010. Design Research in Information Systems: Theory and Practice. Springer.

Digital Library

[14]

A. Hevner, S. T. March, J. Park, and S. Ram. 2004. Design science in information systems research. MIS Quarterly 28, 1, 75--105.

[15]

S. R. Hiltz, P. Diaz, and G. Mark. 2011. Introduction: Social media and collaborative systems for crisis management. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 18, 4, 1--6.

Digital Library

[16]

S. R. Hiltz and M. Turoff. 1985. Structuring computer-mediated communication systems to avoid information overload. Communications of the ACM, 28, 7, 680--689.

Digital Library

[17]

S. R. Hiltz, B. van de Walle, and M. Turoff. 2011. The domain of emergency management information. In B. Van De M. Walle Turoff, and S. R. Hiltz (Eds.), Information Systems for Emergency Management. M. E. Sharpe, New York, NY, 3--20.

[18]

R. Johansen. 1988. GroupWare: Computer Support for Business Teams. The Free Press, New York, NY.

Digital Library

[19]

R. E. Kraut, D. Gergle, and S. Fussell. 2002. The use of visual information in shared visual spaces: Informing the development of virtual co-presence. In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’02). ACM, New York, NY.

Digital Library

[20]

G. H. Kwon, T. L. Smith-Jackson, and C. W. Bostian. 2011. Socio-cognitive aspects of interoperability: Understanding communication task environments among different organizations. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 18, 4, 1--21.

Digital Library

[21]

J. Landgren. 2006. Making action visible in time-critical work. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’06). ACM, New York, NY, 201--210.

Digital Library

[22]

G. H. Lewes. 1875. Problems of Life and Mind. Osgood, London, UK.

[23]

K. Lewin. 1958. Group Decision and Social Change. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, NY.

[24]

B. Ley, T. Ludwig, V. Pipek, D. Randall, C. Reuter, and T. Wiedenhoefer. 2014. Information and expertise sharing in inter-organizational crisis management. Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing (JCSCW) 23, 4--6, 347--387.

Digital Library

[25]

B. Ley, V. Pipek, C. Reuter, and T. Wiedenhoefer. 2012. Supporting improvisation work in inter-organizational crisis management. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’12). ACM, New York, NY, 1529--1538.

Digital Library

[26]

B. Ley, V. Pipek, T. Siebigteroth, and T. Wiedenhoefer. 2013. Retrieving and exchanging of information in inter-organizational crisis management. In Proceedings of the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM’13). Baden-Baden, Germany, 812--822.

[27]

S. Lindström and M. Pettersson. 2010. Supporting ad-hoc re-planning and shareability at large-scale events. In Proceedings of International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP’10). ACM, New York, NY, 245--252.

Digital Library

[28]

S. B. Liu and L. Palen. 2010. The new cartographers: Crisis map mashups and the emergence of neogeographic practice. Cartography and Geographic Information Science 37, 1, 69--90.

[29]

T. Ludwig, C. Reuter, and V. Pipek. 2013. What you see is what I need: Mobile reporting practices in emergencies. In O. W. Bertelsen, L. Ciolfi, A. Grasso, and G. A. Papadopoulos (Eds.), Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW’13). Springer, 181--206.

[30]

R. McMaster and C. Baber. 2012. Multi-agency operations: Cooperation during flooding. Applied Ergonomics 43, 1, 38--47.

[31]

D. Mendonça. 2007. Decision support for improvisation in response to extreme events: Learning from the response to the 2001 World Trade Center attack. Decision Support Systems 43, 3, 952--967.

Digital Library

[32]

A. Monares, S. F. Ochoa, J. A. Pino, V. Herskovic, J. Rodriguez-Covili, and A. Neyem. 2011. Mobile computing in urban emergency situations: Improving the support to firefighters in the field. Expert Systems with Applications, 38, 2, 1255--1267.

Digital Library

[33]

E. G. Nilsson and K. Stølen. 2010. Ad hoc networks and mobile devices in emergency response—a perfect match&quest; Ad Hoc Networks—Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunication Engineering, 49, 17--33.

[34]

W. J. Orlikowski. 1997. Evolving with notes: Organizational change around groupware technology. In C. U. Ciborra (Ed.), Groupware and Teamwork. John Wiley and Sons, New York, NY, 23--59.

Digital Library

[35]

L. Palen and S. B. Liu. 2007. Citizen communications in crisis: Anticipating a future of ICT-supported public participation. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’07). ACM, New York NY, 727--736.

Digital Library

[36]

C. Y. Peng, W. S. Kao, Y. Z. Liang, and W. K. Chiou. 2007. The practices of scenario observation approach in defining medical tablet PC applications. In Human-Computer Interaction. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 4553). Springer, 518--524.

Digital Library

[37]

E. L. Quarantelli. 1988. Disaster crisis management: A summary of research findings. Journal of Management Studies 25, 4, 373--385. Retrieved September 12, 2014 from http://udspace.udel.edu/bitstream/handle/19716/487/PP113.pdf.

[38]

E. L. Rakea and O. Njå. 2009. Perceptions and performances of experienced incident commanders. Journal of Risk Research 12, 5, 665--685.

[39]

C. Reuter. 2014. Emergent Collaboration Infrastructures: Technology Design for Inter-Organizational Crisis Management. Ph.D. thesis. University of Siegen, Siegen.

[40]

C. Reuter, O. Heger, and V. Pipek. 2013. Combining real and virtual volunteers through social media. In T. Comes, F. Fiedrich, S. Fortier, J. Geldermann, and T. Müller (Eds.), Proceedings of the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM’13). Baden-Baden, Germany, 780--790.

[41]

C. Reuter, A. Marx, and V. Pipek. 2012. Crisis management 2.0: Towards a systematization of social software use in crisis situations. International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (IJISCRAM) 4, 1, 1--16.

[42]

C. Reuter and M. Ritzkatis. 2013. Unterstützung mobiler Geo-Kollaboration zur Lageeinschätzung von Feuerwehr und Polizei. In R. Alt and B. Franczyk (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik. 1877--1891. Retrieved September 12, 2014 from http://aisel.aisnet.org/wi2013/117.

[43]

W. Schafer, C. H. Ganoe, and J. M. Carroll. 2007. Supporting community emergency management planning through a geocollaboration software architecture. Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing (JCSCW) 16, 4--5, 501--537.

Digital Library

[44]

C. Schmidt. 2004. The analysis of semi-structured interviews. In U. Flick, E. V. Kardorff, and I. Steinke (Eds.), A Companion to Qualitative Research. Sage, London, UK, 253--258.

[45]

K. Schmidt and L. Bannon. 1992. Taking CSCW seriously: Supporting articulation work. Cooperative Work and Coordinative Practices, 1, 1, 1--33. Retrieved September 12, 2014 from http://www.springerlink.com/index/P27V3670L1V03442.pdf.

[46]

J. Schöning, M. Rohs, A. Krüger, and C. Stasch. 2009. Improving the communication of spatial information in crisis response by combining paper maps and mobile devices. In J. Löffler and M. Klann (Eds.), Mobile Response (Vol. 5424). 57--65.

[47]

B. Semaan and G. Mark. 2011. Technology-mediated social arrangements to resolve breakdowns in infrastructure during ongoing disruption. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 18, 4, 1--21.

Digital Library

[48]

K. Starbird and L. Palen. 2013. Working and sustaining the virtual “Disaster Desk.” In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’13). ACM, New York, NY, 491--502.

Digital Library

[49]

A. L. Strauss. 1987. Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. Cambridge Press, Cambridge, MA.

[50]

E. Tamaru, K. Hasuike, and M. Tozaki. 2005. Cellular phone as a collaboration tool that empowers and changes the way of mobile work: Focus on three fields of work. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW’05). Springer-Verlag, 247--266.

Digital Library

[51]

M. Turoff, M. Chumer, B. van de Walle, and X. Yao. 2004. The design of a dynamic emergency response management information system (DERMIS). The Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (JITTA) 5, 4, 1--35. Retrieved September 12, 2014 from http://aisel.aisnet.org/jitta/vol5/iss4/3.

[52]

M. Turoff, S. R. Hiltz, C. White, L. Plotnick, A. Hendela, and X. Yao. 2009. The past as the future for emergency planning and response. International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (IJISCRAM) 1, 1, 12--28.

[53]

S. Vieweg, A. L. Hughes, K. Starbird, and L. Palen. 2010. Microblogging during two natural hazards events: What Twitter may contribute to situational awareness. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’10). ACM, New York, NY, 1079--1088.

Digital Library

[54]

K. E. Weick. 1993. The collapse of sensemaking in organizations: The Mann Gulch disaster. Administrative Science Quarterly 38, 4, 628--652. Retrieved September 12, 2014 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2393339.

[55]

D. Wenger, E. L. Quarantelli, and R. R. Dynes. 1989. Disaster Analysis: Police and Fire Departments. University of Delaware, Disaster Research Center. Retrieved September 12, 2014 from http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/1141.

[56]

A. Wu, G. Convertino, C. H. Ganoe, J. M. Carroll, and X. L. Zhang. 2013. Supporting collaborative sense-making in emergency management through geo-visualization. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS) 71, 1, 4--23.

Digital Library

[57]

V. Wulf, M. Rohde, V. Pipek, and G. Stevens. 2011. Engaging with practices: Design case studies as a research framework in CSCW. In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’11). ACM, New York, NY, 505--512.

Digital Library

[58]

S. Zlatanova and A. G. Fabbri. 2009. Geo-ICT for risk and disaster management. In H. J. Scholten, R. Velde, and N. van Manen (Eds.), Geospatial Technology and the Role of Location in Science. Springer, 1--22. Retrieved September 12, 2014 from http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+ and+geography/geographical+information+systems/book/978-90-481-2619-4.

Cited By

Abe YTsujiguchi HSakamoto DOno T(2024)Temaneki: Map-Based Collaboration Tool for Consensus-Building in Student-Run Festival Management TeamsExtended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651013(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3651013
Schmid SHartwig KCieslinski RReuter C(2024)Digital Resilience in Dealing with Misinformation on Social Media during COVID-19Information Systems Frontiers10.1007/s10796-022-10347-526:2(477-499)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10796-022-10347-5
Riebe TBäumler JKaufhold MReuter C(2024)Values and Value Conflicts in the Context of OSINT Technologies for Cybersecurity Incident Response: A Value Sensitive Design PerspectiveComputer Supported Cooperative Work10.1007/s10606-022-09453-433:2(205-251)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10606-022-09453-4
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Ad Hoc Participation in Situation Assessment: Supporting Mobile Collaboration in Emergencies
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing

Recommendations

Collaboard: a remote collaboration groupware device featuring an embodiment-enriched shared workspace
GROUP '10: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work

In this paper we present a mixed presence groupware device called "CollaBoard". The device improves collaboration between co-located and remote partners by providing a high level of workspace awareness. This is achieved by superimposing a life-size ...
CAWS: An Awareness Based Wiki System to Improve Team Collaboration
ICALT '08: Proceedings of the 2008 Eighth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies

Effective collaborative authoring techniques require tools that consider the social aspects of collaboration in addition to the technical aspects. Collaborative authoring is fundamentally different to individual writing because of the communications ...
A model for situation and threat/impact assessment in vehicular ad-hoc networks
DIVANet '14: Proceedings of the fourth ACM international symposium on Development and analysis of intelligent vehicular networks and applications

In this paper, a model is proposed to define situations structures and situation evolution. This model is the fundamental basis of a Threat/Impact assessment system that is implemented using a Fuzzy extension of Multi-Entity Bayesian Network in ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Volume 21, Issue 5

November 2014

120 pages

ISSN:1073-0516

EISSN:1557-7325

DOI:10.1145/2692163

Editor:
Shumin Zhai
Google

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 November 2014

Accepted: 01 July 2014

Revised: 01 May 2014

Received: 01 January 2014

Published in TOCHI Volume 21, Issue 5

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

31
Total Citations
View Citations
680
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)25
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)8

Reflects downloads up to 19 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Abe YTsujiguchi HSakamoto DOno T(2024)Temaneki: Map-Based Collaboration Tool for Consensus-Building in Student-Run Festival Management TeamsExtended Abstracts of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3651013(1-8)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3651013
Schmid SHartwig KCieslinski RReuter C(2024)Digital Resilience in Dealing with Misinformation on Social Media during COVID-19Information Systems Frontiers10.1007/s10796-022-10347-526:2(477-499)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10796-022-10347-5
Riebe TBäumler JKaufhold MReuter C(2024)Values and Value Conflicts in the Context of OSINT Technologies for Cybersecurity Incident Response: A Value Sensitive Design PerspectiveComputer Supported Cooperative Work10.1007/s10606-022-09453-433:2(205-251)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10606-022-09453-4
Gutiérrez ÁBlanco PRuiz VChatzigeorgiou COregui XÁlvarez MNavarro SFeidakis MAzpiroz IIzquierdo GLarraga-García BKasnesis POlaizola IÁlvarez F(2023)Biosignals Monitoring of First Responders for Cognitive Load Estimation in Real-Time OperationApplied Sciences10.3390/app1313736813:13(7368)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/app13137368
Georganta EPeus CNiess J(2023)Interactive technologies through the lens of team effectiveness: an interdisciplinary systematic literature reviewEuropean Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology10.1080/1359432X.2023.217890433:2(172-187)Online publication date: 23-Feb-2023
https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2023.2178904
Vinella FOdo CLykourentzou IMasthoff J(2022)How Personality and Communication Patterns Affect Online ad-hoc Teams Under PressureFrontiers in Artificial Intelligence10.3389/frai.2022.8184915Online publication date: 27-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2022.818491
Eismann KPosegga OFischbach K(2022)Opening organizational learning in crisis managementThe Journal of Strategic Information Systems10.1016/j.jsis.2021.10169230:4Online publication date: 9-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jsis.2021.101692
Riebe TKaufhold MReuter C(2021)The Impact of Organizational Structure and Technology Use on Collaborative Practices in Computer Emergency Response Teams: An Empirical StudyProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34798655:CSCW2(1-30)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3479865
Kuge JGrundgeiger TSchlosser PSanderson PHappel O(2021)Design and Evaluation of a Head-Worn Display Application for Multi-Patient MonitoringProceedings of the 2021 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3461778.3462011(879-890)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3461778.3462011
Son CSasangohar FNeville TPeres SMoon J(2020)Investigating resilience in emergency management: An integrative review of literatureApplied Ergonomics10.1016/j.apergo.2020.10311487(103114)Online publication date: Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2020.103114
Show More Cited By

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents