Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Supporting Community Emergency Management Planning through a Geocollaboration Software Architecture

  • Published:
Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Emergency management is more than just events occurring within an emergency situation. It encompasses a variety of persistent activities such as planning, training, assessment, and organizational change. We are studying emergency management planning practices in which geographic communities (towns and regions) prepare to respond efficiently to significant emergency events. Community emergency management planning is an extensive collaboration involving numerous stakeholders throughout the community and both reflecting and challenging the community’s structure and resources. Geocollaboration is one aspect of the effort. Emergency managers, public works directors, first responders, and local transportation managers need to exchange information relating to possible emergency event locations and their surrounding areas. They need to examine geospatial maps together and collaboratively develop emergency plans and procedures. Issues such as emergency vehicle traffic routes and staging areas for command posts, arriving media, and personal first responders’ vehicles must be agreed upon prior to an emergency event to ensure an efficient and effective response. This work presents a software architecture that facilitates the development of geocollaboration solutions. The architecture extends prior geocollaboration research and reuses existing geospatial information models. Emergency management planning is one application domain for the architecture. Geocollaboration tools can be developed that support community-wide emergency management planning and preparedness. This paper describes how the software architecture can be used for the geospatial, emergency management planning activities of one community.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Brewer, I. (2004): Understanding Work with Geospatial Information in Emergency Management: A Cognitive Systems Engineering Approach in GIScience. PhD Dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania

  • Camp, P.J., J.M. Hudson, R.B. Keldorph, S. Lewis and E.D. Mynatt (2000): Supporting Communication and Collaboration Practices in Safety-Critical Situations. Proceedings of the conference on Computer-Human Interactions, 249–150

  • Cai, G., A.M. MacEachren and L. Bolelli (2004): GCCM: Map-mediated Collaboration among Emergency Operation Centers and Mobile Teams. Poster presented at GIScience

  • Carroll, J.M., G. Chin, M.B. Rosson and D.C. Neale (2000): The Development of Cooperation: Five Years of Participatory Design in the Virtual School. In Proceedings of Designing Interactive Systems, 239–251

  • Chabert A., Grossman E., Jackson L.S., Pietrowiz S.R., & Seguin C. (1998): Java object-sharing in Habanero. Communications of the ACM, 41(6), 69–76

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Churcher, N.I. and C.D. Churcher (1996): GroupARC-A Collaborative Approach to GIS. Proceedings of the 8th Annual Colloquium of the Spatial Information Research Centre, 156–163

  • Churcher N.I., & Churcher C.D. (1999): Real-time conferencing in GIS. Transactions in GIS, 3(1), 23–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Comfort, L. (1999): Self Organization in Disaster Mitigation and Management: Increasing Community Capacity for Response. Presentation given at The International Emergency Management Society conference

  • Convertino, G., C.H. Ganoe, W. Schafer, B. Yost and J.M. Carroll (2005): A Multiple View Approach to Support Common Ground in Distributed and Synchronous Geo-Collaboration, Coordinated & Multiple Views in Exploratory Visualization 2005, 5 July 2005, London, UK, 121–132

  • Corradini, A., R.M. Wesson and P.R. Cohen (2002): A Map-based System Using Speech and 3D Gestures for Pervasive Computing. Presented at the 4th IEEE International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces, October 14–16, Pittsburgh, PA

  • Gröschel J., Philipp F., Skonetzki S., Genzwürker H., Wetter T., & Ellinger K. (2004): Automated Speech Recognition For Time Recording In Out-Of-Hospital Emergency Medicine- An Experimental Approach. Resuscitation, 60(2), 205–212

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gurstein, M. (2002): Community Informatics: Current Status and Future Prospects – Some Thoughts’, Community Technology Review, Winter-Spring, Available online: http://www.comtechreview.org/winter-spring-2002/000056.html

  • Haddow G.D., & Bullock J.A. (2003): Introduction to Emergency Management. Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann

    Google Scholar 

  • Holzman T.G. (1999): Computer-Human Interface Solutions for Emergency Medical Care. Interactions, 6(3), 13–24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Isenhour P.L., Rosson M.B., & Carroll J.M. (2001): Supporting Interactive Collaboration on the Web with CORK. Interacting with Computers, 13, 655–676

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacobs, J.L., M.C.P. Dorneich and P.M. Jones (1998): Activity Representation and Management for Crisis Action Planning. Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 961–966

  • Jankowski P., Nyerges T.L., Smith A., Moore T.J., & Horvath E. (1997): Spatial Group Choice: A SDSS Tool for Collaborative Spatial Decision-Making. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 11(6), 577–602

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jian, X., N.C. Chen, J.I. Hong, K. Wang, L. Takayama and J.A. Landay (2004): SIREN: Context-Aware Computing for Firefighting. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Pervasive Computing, 87–105

  • Jian, X., J.I. Hong, L.A. Takayama and J.A. Landay (2004): Ubiquitous Computing for Firefighters: Field Studies and Prototypes of Large Displays for Incident Command. Proceedings of the conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press, 679–686

  • Johnson, C.W. (2005): Applying the Lessons of the Attack on the World Trade Center, 11th September (2001), to the Design and Use of Interactive Evacuation Simulations. Proceedings of the conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM Press, 651–660

  • Jones, A.C. (2004): The Information-Technology-People Abstraction Hierarchy: A Tool For Complex Information System Design. Masters Thesis, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania

  • Jones, R.E.T., M.D. McNeese, E.S. Connors, T. Jefferson and D.L. Hall (2004): A Distributed Cognition Simulation Involving Homeland Security and Defense: The Development of NeoCITIES. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 48th Annual Meeting, 631–634

  • Lee, R.L., W.A. Schafer, A.J. Knoche and J.M. Carroll (2006): The Role of Social Capital in Emergency Response. In proceedings of the Twelfth Americans Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2006), Acapulco, Mexico

  • Lindell M.K., & Perry R.W. (1992): Behavioral Foundations of Community Emergency Planning. Washington: Hemisphere Publishing Corporation

    Google Scholar 

  • Lorincz K., Malan D.J., Fulford-Jones T.R.F., Nawoj A., Clavel A., Shnayder V., Mainland G., Welsh M., & Moulton S. (2004): Sensor Networks for Emergency Response: Challenges and Opportunities. Pervasive Computing, 3(4), 16–23

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oviatt S. (1997): Mulitmodal Interactive Maps: Designing for Human Performance. Human-Computer Interaction, 12, 93–129

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parnas D.L. (1972): On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules. Communications of the ACM, 15(10), 1053–1058

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pettersson M., Randall D., & Helgeson B. (2004): Ambiguities, Awareness, and Economy: A Study of Emergency Service Work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 13, 125–154

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quarantelli, E.L. (2003): A Half Century Of Social Science Disaster Research: Selected Major Findings And Their Applicability. Preliminary Paper# 336, Disaster Research Center, Available online: http://dspace.udel.edu:8080/dspace/handle/19716/297

  • Rambaldi G., Kwaku Kyem A.P., Mbile P., McCall M., & Weiner D. (2006): Participatory Spatial Information Management and Communication in Developing Countries. Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries (EJISDC) 25(1), 1–9

    Google Scholar 

  • Rauschert, I., P. Agrawal, S. Fuhrmann, I. Brewer, H. Wang, R. Sharma, G. Cai and A. MacEachren (2002): Designing a Human-Centered, Multimodal GIS Interface to Support Emergency Management. Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, 119–124

  • Reenskaug, T. Models – Views – Controllers, Xerox PARC, 1979. Retrieved from http://heim.ifi.uio.no/∼trygver/1979/mvc-2/1979–12-MVC.pdf

  • Rinner, C. (1999): Argumaps for spatial planning. Proceedings of TeleGeo’99, First International Workshop on Telegeoprocessing, 95–102

  • Rinner, C. (1999): Argumentation maps-GIS-based discussion support for online planning. PhD Dissertation, University of Bonn, 1999. Retrieved from http://www.gmd.de/publications/research/1999/022/

  • Roseman M., & Greenberg S. (1996): Building Real Time Groupware with GroupKit, A Groupware Toolkit. ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction, 3(1), 66–106

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schafer, W.A. (2004): Supporting spatial collaboration: An Investigation Of Viewport Constraint and Awareness Techniques. PhD Dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, 2004. Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-04222004–142351/

  • Schafer W.A., & Bowman D.A. (2006): Supporting Distributed Spatial Collaboration: An Investigation of Navigation and Radar View Techniques. GeoInformatica, 10(2), 123–158

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schafer, W.A., J.M. Carroll, S.R. Haynes and S. Abrams Emergency Management Planning as Collaborative Community Work, submitted

  • Schafer W.A., Ganoe C.H., Xiao L., Coch G., & Carroll J.M. (2005): Designing the Next Generation of Distributed, Geocollaborative Tools. Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 32(2), 81–100

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sharma R., Yeasin M., Krahnstoever N., Rauschert I., Cai C., Brewer I., MacEachren A., & Sengupta K. (2003): Speech-Gesture Driven Multimodal Interfaces for Crisis Management. Proceedings of the IEEE, 91(9), 1327–1354

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steinmann, R., A. Krek and T. Blaschke (2004): Analysis of online public participatory GIS applications with respect to the differences between the US and Europe. Urban Data Management Symposium (UDMS 2004)

  • Terrell, I.S., M.D. McNeese and T. Jefferson (2004): Exploring Cognitive Work Within a 911 Dispatch Center: Using Complementary Knowledge Elicitation Techniques. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 48th Annual Meeting, 605–609

  • Tjora, A. (2004): Maintaining Redundancy in the Coordination of Medical Emergencies. Proceedings of the conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 132–141

  • Turoff M., Chumer M., Van de Walle B., & Yao X. (2004): The Design of a Dynamic Emergency Response Management Information System (DERMIS). Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application, 5(4), 1–35

    Google Scholar 

  • World Health Organization. (1999): Community emergency preparedness: a manual for managers and policy-makers. Geneva: World Health Organization

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Author notes

  1. Wendy A. Schafer

    Present address: Viz, General Dynamics C4 Systems, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Human-Computer Interaction, College of Information Sciences & Technology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Wendy A. Schafer, Craig H. Ganoe & John M. Carroll

Authors
  1. Wendy A. Schafer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Craig H. Ganoe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. John M. Carroll
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wendy A. Schafer.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Schafer, W.A., Ganoe, C.H. & Carroll, J.M. Supporting Community Emergency Management Planning through a Geocollaboration Software Architecture. Comput Supported Coop Work 16, 501–537 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-007-9050-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-007-9050-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation