Emergency Communication

Pandemicity and Severity are Separate Constructs

by Alan Card

New technologies and citizen perception of the communication of emergencies

by Carles Pont

Spanish version / versión en castellano
Las nuevas tecnologías y la percepción de los ciudadanos ante la comunicación de emergencias

The irruption of new technologies has allowed a substantial improvement of information in emergency situations. This... more The irruption of new technologies has allowed a substantial improvement of information in emergency situations. This research presents the adaptation of the Catalan administration to different information systems to spread information on risks, catastrophes and emergencies. The spread of that information is analyzed together with the application of new technologies, especially Web 2.0, compared to the United States. Besides, the perception of the Catalan public opinion regarding the quality of the information and the mechanisms through which a crisis episode is reported has been studied.

A Model Assessment Tool for the Incident Command System: A Case Study of the San Antonio Fire Department

by Brian O'Neill

10 Public health emergency communications AJEM

by Deon Canyon

Interoperability by 'Edgeware': Wireless Grids for Emergency Response (2011)

by Andreas Kuehn

44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) 2011

'Edgeware' for wireless grid connectivity, utilizes open specifications developed by the National Science Foundation... more 'Edgeware' for wireless grid connectivity, utilizes open specifications developed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) 'Wireless Grid Innovation Testbed' (WiGiT) to enable greater interoperability across devices, networks, applications, content and services. A wide range of new 'edgeware' applications is emerging for businesses, education, government agencies and individuals.

Challenges in emergency response include interoperability, social and human factors. 'Edgeware,' a new class of software designed to share resources across people, devices, services and content has the potential capacity to solve problems of interoperability and control over resources, by the creation of wireless grids. This will allow people to access programs and data on disparate devices, across available wired and wireless networks and provide greater access to resources.

Emergency services applications of wireless grids will empower citizens through their devices to contribute to their own community response. The authors describe 'Neighborhood Notification System' gridlets, now in development, which are just the first examples of use of wireless grids for emergency response. The authors conclude that police, fire, EMS, hospitals, municipal services, utilities, gas companies, media, and community residents will benefit from enhanced information sharing in emergencies based on this interoperability by 'edgeware' solution.

Interoperability and information brokers in public safety: an approach toward seamless emergency communications (2011)

by Andreas Kuehn

Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research (JTAER), Special Issue on E-government Interoperability, Infrastructure and Architecture: State-of-the-art and Challenges

When a disaster occurs, the rapid gathering and sharing of crucial information among public safety agencies, emergency... more When a disaster occurs, the rapid gathering and sharing of crucial information among public safety agencies, emergency response units, and the public can save lives and reduce the scope of the problem; yet, this is seldom achieved. The lack of interoperability hinders effective collaboration across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. In this article, we propose a general architecture for emergency communications that incorporates (1) an information broker, (2) events and event-driven processes, and (3) interoperability. This general architecture addresses the question of how an information broker can overcome obstacles, breach boundaries for seamless communication, and empower the public to become active participants in emergency communications. Our research is based on qualitative case studies on emergency communications, workshops with public safety agencies, and a comparative analysis of interoperability issues in the European public sector. This article features a conceptual approach toward proposing a way in which public safety agencies can achieve optimal interoperability and thereby enable seamless communication and crowdsourcing in emergency prevention and response.

Collaborative Situational Mapping During Emergency Response

by Willem-Paul Brinkman

Gunawan, L.T., Ooms, A.H.J., Neerincx, M., Brinkman, W.-P., & Alers, H., "Collaborative situational mapping during emergency response", Proceedings of ECCE2009, ISBN 978-951-38-6339-5, pp. 85 - 91, 2009.

During emergency response, individuals observe only part of the picture, sharing of information is needed to get the... more During emergency response, individuals observe only part of the picture, sharing of information is needed to get the required complete picture. The aim of our study is to get insight in the collaborative mapping process in order to derive requirements for a map-sharing tool. First, we analyzed the domain to assess the mapping processes, to identify general problem areas of the assessed processes. Subsequently, we conducted a laboratory experiment to systematically investigate the indentified problem of collaborative map construction by individuals who observed an incident from different perspectives.

This paper discuss an experiment, which showed that the individual maps are sometimes better than the jointly constructed map, among other things due to the collaboration biases of unbalanced relations and uncertainty about oneself. Thus based on this experiment, the collaborative mapping tool should support joint map construction and help to prevent the identified collaboration biases.

Making Sense of Hurricanes: Public Discourse and Perceived Risk of Extreme Weather.

by Donna Kain

Smith, Catherine F., Donna J. Kain. 2010. Making Sense of Hurricanes: Public Discourse and Perceived Risk of Extreme Weather. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines 4.2: 180-196.

Information Usability Testing as Audience and Context Analysis for Risk Communication

by Donna Kain

2010. Kain, Donna, Menno deJong, Catherine F. Smith. "Information Usability Testing as Audience and Context Analysis for Risk Communication." In Usability of Complex Information Systems: Evaluation of User Interaction. Michael Albers and Brian Still, Eds. Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Emergency communication: Case study of problematics in public discourse regarding hurricane risks and hazards

by Donna Kain