Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Information Sharing Among Disaster Responders - An Interactive Spreadsheet-Based Collaboration Approach

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

Abstract

Recent natural disasters have led crisis management organizations to revise their protocols so as to rely on the contribution of a wider range of actors, including simple citizens as well as expert operators, to support decision making activities. Reliable and timely information sharing among members of distributed teams of disaster responders has become paramount for the success of the overall crisis management process. In this paper we propose a crisis management system based on spreadsheet-mediated collaboration among on-site responders and decision makers. To share data a common spreadsheet artifact has been developed by using a participatory design approach which is accessed through mobile user interfaces. The evaluation results showed that the use of the spreadsheet artifact has resulted in more effective decision making relating to set of earthquake management scenarios in high-risk areas located in Italy.

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
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Aedo, I., Díaz, P., Carroll, J. M., Convertino, G. & Rosson, M.B. (2010). End-user oriented strategies to facilitate multi-organizational adoption of emergency management information systems. Journal Information Processing and Management: an International Journal, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 11–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beaumont, C. (2008). Mumbai attacks: Twitter and Flickr used to break news.The Telegraph, November 27, 2008. Retrieved from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/3530640/Mumbai-attacks-Twitter-and-Flickr-used-to-break-news-Bombay-India.html.

  • Bello, P.G., Aedo, I., Sainz, F., Díaz, P., Munnelly, J. & Clarke, S. (2007). Improving communication for mobile devices in disaster response. Mobile Response, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4458, pp. 126–134

  • Boodhoo, N. (2010). Earthquake confirms value of social media.Miami Herald, January 18, 2010. Retrieved from: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/01/18/1432022/earthquake-confirms-value-of-social.html

  • Cai, G., Bolelli, L., MacEachren, A. M., Sharma, R., Fuhrmann, S. & McNeese, M. (2004). GeoCollaborative crisis management: using maps to mediate EOC-mobile team collaboration. Proceedings of the 2004 Annual NFS Digital Government Conference [Internet], pp. 269–270. Retrieved from http://www.geovista.psu.edu/publications/2004/maceachren/MacEachren_GCCM_Highlights_04.pdf

  • Careem, M., De Silva, C., De Silva, R., Raschid, L. & Weerawarana, S. (2006). Sahana: Overview of a Disaster Management System. Proceedings of the International Conference on Information and Automation, pp. 361–366.

  • Carver, L. & Turoff, M. (2007). Human computer interaction: The human and computer as a team in emergency management information systems. Communications of the ACM - Emergency response information systems: emerging trends and technologies, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 33–38.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chen, R., Sharman, R., Rao, H. R. & Upadhyaya, S. J. (2008). Coordination in emergency response management. Communications of the ACM, vol. 51, no. 5, pp. 66–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Convertino, G., Mentis, H. M., Slavkovic, A., Rosson M. B. & Carroll, J. M. (2011). Supporting Common Ground and Awareness in Emergency Management Planning: A Design Research Project. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, vol. 18, no. 4, article no. 22, pp. 1–34.

  • Cooper, A., Reimann, R. & Cronin, D. (2007). About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diaz, P., Aedo, I., Romano, M. & Onorati, T. (2013). Supporting Citizens 2.0 in Disasters Response. Proceedings of Conference on Methodologies, Technologies and Tools enabling e-Government MeTTeG, pp. 1–10.

  • Durbin, T., Jennex, M.E., Frost, E. & Judge, R. (2010). Achieving Electric Restoration Logistical Efficiencies During Critical Infrastructure Crisis Response: A Knowledge Management Analysis. International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 36–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ginige, A., Paolino, L., Sebillo, M., Shirodkar, R. & Vitiello, G. (2010). User Requirements for a Web Based Spreadsheet-Mediated Collaboration. International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces AVI’10, pp. 133–136.

  • Goodchild, M.F. (2007). Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography. GeoJournal, vol. 69, no. 4, pp. 211–221

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gupta, S. & Knoblock, C. A. (2010). Building Geospatial Mashups to Visualize Information for Crisis Management. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management ISCRAM’10, pp. 1–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Howe, A.W., Jennex, M.E., Bressler, G.H. & Frost, E.G. (2011). Exercise 24: Using Social Media for Crisis Response. International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 36–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jaeger, P. T., Shneiderman, B., Fleischmann, K. R., Preece, J., Qu, Y. & Wu, F. P. (2007). Community response grids: E-government, social networks, and effective emergency response. Telecommunications Policy, vol. 31, no. 10–11, 592–604.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jennex, M.E. (2004). Emergency Response Systems: The Utility Y2K Experience. Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 85–102.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kim, S., Jang, Y., Mellema, A., Ebert, D. S. & Collins, T. (2007). Visual Analytics on Mobile Devices for Emergency Response. Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science and Technology VAST ’07, pp. 35–42.

  • Landgren, J. & Nulden, U. (2007). A study of emergency response work: patterns of mobile phone interaction. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI’07, pp. 1323–1332

  • Martin, D. & Sommerville, I. (2004). Patterns of cooperative interaction: Linking ethnomethodology and design. Journal ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), vol. 11, no.1, pp.59-89.

  • Meier, P. (2013). Self-Organized Crisis Response to #BostonMarathon Attack. iRevolution. Retrieved from http://irevolution.net/2013/04/16/bostonmarathon-attack/

  • Murphy, T. & Jennex, M.E. (2006). Knowledge Management, Emergency Response, and Hurricane Katrina. International Journal of Intelligent Control Systems, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 199–208.

    Google Scholar 

  • Palen, L., Anderson, K. M., Mark, G., Martin, J., Sicker, D., Palmer, M. & Grunwald, D. (2010). A vision for technology-mediated support for public participation and assistance in mass emergencies and disasters. Proceedings of the Visions of Computer Science Conference ACM-BCS ’10, pp. 1–12

  • Panko, R. P. (2007). Two Experiments in Reducing Overconfidence in Spreadsheet Development. Journal of Organizational and End User Computing, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 1–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Paolino, L., Romano, M., Sebillo, M., Tortora, G. & Vitiello, G. (2010). A Collaborative Environment for Spreadsheet-Based Activities. Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing VL/HCC’10, pp. 273–274.

  • Paolino, L., Sebillo, M., Tortora, G. & Vitiello, G. (2008). Framy - visualising geographic data on mobile interfaces. Journal Location Based Services, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 236–252.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Petak, W. J. (1985). Emergency management: a challenge for public administration. Public Administration Review Special Issue: Emergency Management: A Challenge for Public Administration, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 3–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raman, M., Ryan, T., Jennex, M.E. & Olfman, L. (2010). Wiki Technology and Emergency Response: An Action Research Study. International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 49–69.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosson, M.B. & Carroll, J.M. (2002). Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sagun, A., Bouchlaghem, D. & Anumba, C. J. (2009). A scenario-based study on information flow and collaboration patterns in disaster management. Disasters, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 214–238.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schafer, W. A., Ganoe, G. H. & Carroll, J. M. (2007). Supporting Community Emergency Management Planning Through a Geocollaboration Software Architecture. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, vol. 16, no. 4–5, pp. 501–537.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sung, Y.K., Yun, J., Mellema, A., Ebert, D.S. & Collins, T. (2007). Visual Analytics on Mobile Devices for Emergency Response. Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science and Technology, pp. 35–42.

  • Turoff, M., Chumer, M., Van de Walle, B. & Yao, X. (2004). The Design of a Dynamic Emergency Response Management Information Systems. The Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (JITTA), vol. 5, no. 4, pp 1–36.

  • Turoff, M., Hiltz, S. R., White, C., Plotnick, L., Hendela, A. & Yao, X. (2009). The Past as the Future of Emergency Preparedness and Management. International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (IJISCRAM), vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 12–28.

  • Ushaidi (2013). Crowdmap. Retrieved April 24, 2014 from http://ushahidi.com/products/crowdmap.

  • White, C.M. (2012). Social Media, Crisis, Communication, and Emergency Management: Leveraging Web 2.0 Technologies. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Widdis, E., Cole, A. & Stotz, A. (2009). SoftRisk. Incident management systems context and capability for maritime force protection, vol. I, pp. 23–27. Retrieved from http://cradpdf.drdc-rddc.gc.ca/PDFS/unc97/p533097_A1b.pdf

  • Yu, B. & Cai, G. (2009). Facilitating participatory decision-making in local communities through map-based online discussion. Proceedings of the fourth International Conference on Communities and Technologies C&T ’09, pp. 215–224

  • 3DGis, (2014). Sirio. Retrieved April 24, 2014 from www.celesta.it.

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the group of people from the Civil Defence Agency and Municipality of Montemiletto, who gave their valuable contribution to this research. Three of them played a crucial role inside the design team, but thanks are also due to those who took part in the experimental study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Western Sydney, Penrith, Australia

    Athula Ginige

  2. Università di Salerno, Salerno, Italy

    Luca Paolino, Marco Romano, Monica Sebillo, Genoveffa Tortora & Giuliana Vitiello

Authors
  1. Athula Ginige
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Luca Paolino
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Marco Romano
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Monica Sebillo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Genoveffa Tortora
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Giuliana Vitiello
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Athula Ginige.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ginige, A., Paolino, L., Romano, M. et al. Information Sharing Among Disaster Responders - An Interactive Spreadsheet-Based Collaboration Approach. Comput Supported Coop Work 23, 547–583 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-014-9207-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-014-9207-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation