Julie Dugdale

Social media and SMS in the haiti earthquake

We describe some first results of an empirical study describing how social media and SMS were used in coordinating humanitarian relief after the Haiti Earthquake in January 2010. Current information systems for crisis management are increasingly incorporating information obtained from citizens transmitted via social media and SMS. This information proves particularly useful at the aggregate level. However it has led to some problems: information overload and processing difficulties, variable speed of information delivery, managing volunteer communities, and the high risk of receiving inaccurate or incorrect information.

Information management and humanitarian relief coordination: findings from the Haiti earthquake response

The overwhelming humanitarian impact of the January 2010 Earthquake in Haiti created a tremendous coordination challenge for the humanitarian relief agencies. In this paper, we first describe the coordination mechanisms that are implemented by the United Nations and the role of its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). We introduce the cluster approach, which is instrumental in providing a more efficient and effective coordination in affected disaster areas. The main thrust of our paper is on the role and use of information management (IM) in these coordination efforts. To understand better the benefits and problems of information systems, we conducted interviews with experienced information managers who participated in the Haiti relief effort. While the interviewees saw clear benefits of IM for the coordination of humanitarian relief, concerns related to information overload, reliability and accountability were found to impede the realisation of the full potential of IM.

Coupling Case Based Reasoning and Process Mining for a Web Based Crisis Management Decision Support System

This paper presents a research in progress that aims to design and develop a web-based shared environment for stakeholders involved in disaster management. The goal of this environment is two-fold. Firstly it will provide a reliable disaster information source to facilitate the exchange and the analysis of previous crisis information. Secondly, it will assimilate best practices and provide recommendations based on experiences from previous disasters. One of the first steps towards such an environment is to elaborate a common and generic disaster model. This model is also a reference to define a template for the case base of previous disasters. In order for our system to provide recommendations based on previous practices, we combine case based reasoning with process mining. This article presents the first step towards a disaster management decision support system, specifically providing guidance on how to integrate process mining in the case based reasoning cycle.

Towards a conceptual framework to support adaptative agent-based systems partitioning

Scalability is a key issue for Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) that aim to model and simulate complex systems. Distributed infrastructures such as clusters, grids and clouds are powerful computational environments that can be effectively used to run large-scale agent-based simulations. To properly distribute an agent-based system and ensure its performance, an appropriate partitioning approach is required. Although multiple partition methods for distributed MAS exist, they remain specific to the individual requirements of a given application domain. There is no generic approach for guiding the designers and developers to select an appropriate approach for partitioning a given agent-based system. Thus a recurrent challenging task, for MAS designers and developers, is how to evaluate, select and then apply the appropriate partitioning mechanism for a given MAS. Therefore, in this paper, we present a generic conceptual framework useful to analyze existing partitioning methods. It can also be used as a basis while designing a distributed architecture of new MAS.

Understanding Communications in Medical Emergency Situations

Good communication is essential within teams dealing with emergency situations. In this paper we look at communications within a resuscitation team performing cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. Communication underpins efficient collaboration, joint coordination of work, and helps to construct a mutual awareness of the situation. Poor communication wastes valuable time and can ultimately lead to life-threatening mistakes. Although training sessions frequently focus on medical knowledge and procedures, soft skills, such as communication receive less attention. This paper analyses communication problems in the case of CPR and proposes an architecture that merges a situation awareness model and the belief-desire-intention (BDI) approach in multi-agent systems. The architecture forms the basis of an agent-based simulator used to assess communication protocols in CPR teams.