26,494 research outputs found

    IT-Supported Management of Mass Casualty Incidents: The e-Triage Project

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    Voice, analogue mobile radio, and paper have been successfully used for decades for coordination of emergencies and disasters, but although being simple and robust this approach cannot keep pace with today’s requirements any more. Emerging and established digital communication standards open the door to new applications and services, but the expected benefit needs to be carefully evaluated against robustness, interoperability, and user-friendliness. This paper describes a framework for IT-supported management of mass casualty incidents, which is currently under implementation and study. The four pillars of the concept are handheld devices for use both in daily rescue operations and in disasters, autonomous satellite-based communication infrastructure, a distributed database concept for maximal availability, and psychological acceptance research

    GABEK WinRelan¼ – a Qualitative Method for Crisis Research Engaging Crisis Management Personnel

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    Qualitative research methods like GABEK WinRelan are advantageous tools to analyze and thereby improve crisis management planning and communication systems by interrogating crisis management personnel. Contrary to quantitative methods they help to identify, explore, and structure new important aspects in this field and to formulate more specific research questions. This paper describes the usage and advantages of the qualitative method GABEK WinRelan within crisis management research, particularly within the e-Triage project which aims at the development of an electronic registration system of affected persons in mass casualty incidents. Furthermore it addresses different corresponding research fields like stress within emergency missions and the role GABEK WinRelan could play in examining these research fields

    An information assistant system for the prevention of tunnel vision in crisis management

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    In the crisis management environment, tunnel vision is a set of bias in decision makers’ cognitive process which often leads to incorrect understanding of the real crisis situation, biased perception of information, and improper decisions. The tunnel vision phenomenon is a consequence of both the challenges in the task and the natural limitation in a human being’s cognitive process. An information assistant system is proposed with the purpose of preventing tunnel vision. The system serves as a platform for monitoring the on-going crisis event. All information goes through the system before arrives at the user. The system enhances the data quality, reduces the data quantity and presents the crisis information in a manner that prevents or repairs the user’s cognitive overload. While working with such a system, the users (crisis managers) are expected to be more likely to stay aware of the actual situation, stay open minded to possibilities, and make proper decisions

    Understanding The Decision-Making Process of Local Level Emergency Managers and Future Impacts of Social Data

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    During the course of a natural disaster, affected populations turn to different avenues to attempt to communicate their needs and locations while emergency managers are faced with the task of making quick decisions to aid in the response effort. The decisions that emergency managers face are affected by factors such as available resources, responder safety, and source of information. In this research, we interview emergency managers about the 2009 North American Ice Storm and a flooding event in late April of 2017 to understand the decisions made and the factors that affected these decisions. Using these interviews, a list of interview questions using the Critical Decision Method were created that could be used to more deeply understand the decisions and decision-making process of a local-level emergency manager during a disaster response event. Additionally, animations were created to illustrate the comparative effectiveness of disaster response routing plans developed with and without the consideration of social data based on data inspired by a real event

    How much does a man cost? A dirty, dull, and dangerous application

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    Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017This study illuminates the many abilities of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). One area of importance includes the UAV's capability to assist in the development, implementation, and execution of crisis management. This research focuses on UAV uses in pre and post crisis planning and accomplishments. The accompaniment of unmanned vehicles with base teams can make crisis management plans more reliable for the general public and teams faced with tasks such as search and rescue and firefighting. In the fight for mass acceptance of UAV integration, knowledge and attitude inventories were collected and analyzed. Methodology includes mixed method research collected by interviews and questionnaires available to experts and ground teams in the UAV fields, mining industry, firefighting and police force career field, and general city planning crisis management members. This information was compiled to assist professionals in creation of general guidelines and recommendations for how to utilize UAVs in crisis management planning and implementation as well as integration of UAVs into the educational system. The results from this study show the benefits and disadvantages of strategically giving UAVs a role in the construction and implementation of crisis management plans and other areas of interest. The results also show that the general public is lacking information and education on the abilities of UAVs. This education gap shows a correlation with negative attitudes towards UAVs. Educational programs to teach the public benefits of UAV integration should be implemented

    Responsibility modelling for civil emergency planning

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    This paper presents a new approach to analysing and understanding civil emergency planning based on the notion of responsibility modelling combined with HAZOPS-style analysis of information requirements. Our goal is to represent complex contingency plans so that they can be more readily understood, so that inconsistencies can be highlighted and vulnerabilities discovered. In this paper, we outline the framework for contingency planning in the United Kingdom and introduce the notion of responsibility models as a means of representing the key features of contingency plans. Using a case study of a flooding emergency, we illustrate our approach to responsibility modelling and suggest how it adds value to current textual contingency plans

    Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

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    This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio

    Early Warning Systems in the Republic of Korea: Experiences, Lessons, and Future Steps

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    This paper examines the cases of the Early Warning System (EWS) in the Republic of Korea, which was introduced in the wake of 1997/98 Asian financial crisis in a policy effort to prevent its recurrence. The EWS in the Republic of Korea was expanded into a national system in 2005 incorporating the finance, real estate, commodities, and labor sectors. This paper provides the descriptions of each EWS sector and documents several episodes of their policy contributions. The past experiences suggest that quantitative models tend to have difficulty predicting a crisis due to the changing nature of crises. Hence, it is desirable that quantitative models are supplemented by qualitative analysis reinforcing EWSs with various methodologies. To improve economic surveillance and message delivery to guide proper policy actions, the independence of surveillance unit should be maintained and the scope of monitoring should be expanded to incorporate regions and markets other than domestic ones given the growing influences of the external sector on the domestic economy through trade and financial linkages.EWS; crisis; surveillance; monitoring; quantitative model; qualitative analysis
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