Jonas Landgren

A study of emergency response work: patterns of mobile phone interaction

This paper presents descriptive accounts of time-critical organizing in the domain of emergency response. Patterns of mobile phone interaction in such work is analyzed showing how the dyadic exchange of mobile phone numbers between the actors plays an important role in the social interactions in the organizing and sensemaking of the emergency. Enacted sensemaking is used as an analytical framework. Implications for design of emergency response information technology are outlined and discussed.

Making action visible in time-critical work

This paper presents descriptive accounts from an ethnographic study of time-critical work in the domain of emergency response and the operative work of fire crews. The verbal communication as part of such work creates difficulties in providing accountability of the fire crews actions. The concept of work rhythms and temporal structures is used as an analytical framework. Design implications are presented suggesting that verbal communication should be made persistent, visible and accessible in order to support accountability. These design implications are discussed in relation to the fire crews work practice.

Using live video for information sharing in emergency response work

This paper presents findings from a design-oriented study focusing on emergency response work. Traditionally, Information Technology (IT) for emergency response work has included en route navigation advice, resource management, hazard material databases, property information repositories and situation reporting using sketching functionality. Now, a new class of IT has become available, namely mobile live video capabilities. This paper presents initial findings from a study on how mobile live video capabilities can improve information sharing and situation awareness in emergency response work.

Visual reporting in time-critical work: exploring video use in emergency response

This paper reports on an explorative project aimed to study the use of live video technology in emergency response work. The initial stage of the project aimed at enabling an emergency response organization with live video capabilities. The study covered the steps of design, development and deployment of an application for live video broadcasting. Over a 10 months period, professional responders has used the application in over 200 incidents. The study shows how short video sequences are produced as an embedded activity in order to capture small fragments of work rather than creating a complete coverage of an incident. Further, this study also shows how broadcasted video is incorporated into the work at the command center as visual reports, which open up for collective negotiations of the broader meaning of a situation.

Tangible tabletops for emergency response: an exploratory study

Effective handling of location-based data is important to emergency response management (ERM). Expert team members co-located around maps typically discuss events while drawing freeform areas or while using physical placeholders representing incidents. Key ERM functions are filtering data, selecting information recipients, searching datasets, drawing time-dependent freeform areas, and zooming in on one region while leaving others unchanged. Under time pressure the mouse and keyboard could be insufficient; intuitive graspable solutions, such as tangible user interfaces (TUIs), may be better suited for ERM. We present CoTracker, a tangible tabletop system with expected potential for ERM teamwork. On an interactive map expert team members can discuss an operational picture using TUIs like bricks, frames, and pens. With the participation of domain experts for cognitive walk-through studies, we examined how generic and specialized TUIs can support ERM-related functions. We present some insights into the design of ERM-focused tangible tabletops.

Social Media and Its Dual Use in Biopreparedness: Communication and Visualization Tools in an Animal Bioterrorism Incident

This article focuses on social media and interactive challenges for emergency organizations during a bioterrorism or agroterrorism incident, and it outlines the dual-use dilemma of social media. Attackers or terrorists can use social media as their modus operandi, and defenders, including emergency organizations in law enforcement and public and animal health, can use it for peaceful purposes. To get a better understanding of the uses of social media in these situations, a workshop was arranged in Stockholm, Sweden, to raise awareness about social media and animal bioterrorism threats. Fifty-six experts and crisis communicators from international and national organizations participated. As a result of the workshop, it was concluded that emergency organizations can collect valuable information and monitor social media before, during, and after an outbreak. In order to make use of interactive communication to obtain collective intelligence from the public, emergency organizations must adapt to social networking technologies, requiring multidisciplinary knowledge in the fields of information, communication, IT, and biopreparedness. Social network messaging during a disease outbreak can be visualized in stream graphs and networks showing clusters of Twitter and Facebook users. The visualization of social media can be an important preparedness tool in the response to bioterrorism and agroterrorism.

Work Practice in Situation Rooms – An Ethnographic Study of Emergency Response Work in Governmental Organizations

This paper presents ethnographic accounts from multiple studies on situation room work in governmental organizations. The purpose of this paper is to make visible aspects of the work practice and provide triggers for future discussions regarding how such work practices could be supported with improved information technology. The findings show the collaborative nature of situation room work and how a variety of information technologies are embedded and intertwined in the practice. Assembling, monitoring, exploring, converging, and consolidating are key activities in a general work pattern in situation rooms.

Workshop summary: collaboration & crisis informatics (CCI'2012)

Events that include the 9/11 attacks, the 2005 Hurricane Katrina or the 2011 Sendai Earthquake have drawn attention to how individuals, organizations or societies can improve crisis preparedness, resilience and recovery. In all scenarios, collaboration between professional responders, public administrations, citizens is critical to response, and needs to be further understood and explored. In this workshop we will bring together academics from various disciplines as well as reflective practitioners to discuss challenges and approaches for improving intra- and inter-organizational collaboration in crisis situations.

Critical Lessons Learned: Evaluation of Commercial Mobile Incident Support Systems

This paper reports from a study of two projects concerning the evaluation of commercial mobile incident support systems. Based on data from ethnographic fieldwork and field experiments, key issues and critical lessons learned from these projects are outlined.

Communicating Location and Geography in Emergency Response

Response organizations often face serious challenges as a result of communication problems during emergency events. This can to a large extent be traced to the tradition of verbal communication in this context. Issues in communication translate to matters of sensemaking, planning, and collaboration among distributed response teams. This paper reports from an interview study with emergency managers regarding the work conducted during a wildfire. Boundary objects and sensemaking were used as analytical lenses, emphasizing how outcome of sensemaking activities are used at different sites and interpreted differently in different work settings. Challenges of verbally exchanging complex information regarding location and geography, between individuals and groups, make us reconsider the role of technology and its potential to support efficient interactions, which will limit ambiguity and uncertainty, and increase accuracy, articulation, and persistence.