Katrina Petersen

Mobile work in crisis

Abstract This paper explores some of the complexities and practices of the massively distributed and mobile work of crisis response. The analysis is motivated by our work of applying insights from social science studies to socio-technical and organisational innovation in crisis management. Insights from ethnographic observations of physically mobilising a multi-agency emergency response are contrasted with a study of troubles in mobilising data for multi-agency and cross border collaboration in crisis management. The analysis shows that a situated interactive order of trust as well as reflexive social and material practices that make for productive rapports are critical for good collaboration. We explore how a deeper understanding of such practices can shed light upon difficulties encountered around supporting interoperability based in immaterial mobile work of networked collaborations.

Common information space for collaborative emergency management

Interoperability and lacks in communication and information sharing are amongst the most common flaws in nowadays emergency management. The socio-technical concept of a Common Information Space (CIS) enhances interoperability and communication even within an organization. In addition, cloud-based implementations of a CIS offer flexibility and adaptability to existing systems and processes. Even more, this allows the efficient integration of a CIS to existing systems and infrastructures. This paper presents a framework concept for cloud-based Common Information Space for emergency management with special regard to cross country use cases. We will present the SecInCoRe concept of a CIS, that somehow can be called a European version and extension of the Unified Incident Command and Decision Support (UICDS, now XChangeCore).

Visualizing Risk: Drawing Together and Pushing Apart with Sociotechnical Practices

This paper examines the relationship between collaborative disaster mapping and conceptions of risk. It looks at the practice of mapmaking during the 2007 wildfires in Southern California to explore sociotechnological issues in creating a shared understanding. By comparing and contrasting how two different, yet intertwined, maps were made this paper focuses on how the sociotechnical acts of alignment necessary for the production of the maps change how risk, threat and uncertainty are approached. One mapmaking practice pulled the actors into a more centralized alignment producing risks related to managing authority and security. The other provided a more distributed collaboration and produced risks related to public trust and consistency. This paper argues that mapmaking is characterized as a messy, distributed network of knowledge production in which the meaning of risk emerges through the collaborations that evolve in making sense of the wildfires, not as an a priori definition.