Crowdsourcing and the folksonomy of emergency response: the construction of a mediated subject

This article explores the role of digital platforms in the involvement of citizens in disaster response, relying on an analysis of metadata and of the structure of classification. It adopts the analytical apparatus of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (Vygotsky, Leontiev, Engeström) and the notion of governmentality (Foucault) in order to conduct a critical comparative analysis of how crowdsourcing platforms construct the relationship between citizens and disasters. The article identifies three regimes of classification (informing, alerting and engagement) and explores the structures of classification for mobilization of citizens’ resources. The notion of governmentality allows us to identify the struggle around the structure of classification as a struggle between the institutional actors interested in controlling citizens’ resources and those actors who are interested in citizen engagement and the synergy between independent and institutional actors as a part of the disaster response. The article suggests the notion of the folksonomy of activity, identifying situations where citizens are able to participate in the definition of their relationships with disaster through participating in classification. It also discusses the visibility of classification and the generativity of classification as a part of citizen–disaster (subject–object) relationships

Siting Power Plants: Recent Experience in California and Best Practices in Other States

Compares California's power plant siting with results in other states. Includes interviews with California state agency representatives, developers and process mediators. Part of a series of research reports that examines energy issues facing California

Toward a Better Understanding of Complex Emergency Response Systems: An Event-Driven Lens for Integrating Formal and Volunteer-Based, Participatory Emergency Responses

abstract: Traditionally, emergency response is in large part the role and responsibility of formal organizations. Advances in information technology enable amateurs or concerned publics to play a meaningful role in emergency response. Indeed, in recent catastrophic disasters or crises such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2011 Japan earthquake and nuclear crisis, participatory online groups of the general public from both across the globe and the affected areas made significant contributions to the effective response through crowdsourcing vital information and assisting with the allocation of needed resources. Thus, a more integrative lens is needed to understand the responses of various actors to catastrophic crises or disasters by taking into account not only formal organizations with legal responsibilities, but also volunteer-based, participatory groups who actively participate in emergency response. In this dissertation, I first developed an “event-driven” lens for integrating both formal and volunteer-based, participatory emergency responses on the basis of a comprehensive literature review (chapter 1). Then I conducted a deeper analysis of one aspect of the event-driven lens: relationships between participatory online groups and formal organizations in crisis or disaster situations. Specifically, I explored organizational and technical determinants and outcomes of forming such relationships (chapter 2). As a consequence, I found out three determinants (resource dependence, shared understanding, and information technology) and two outcomes (inter-organizational alignment and the effectiveness of coordinated emergency response) of the relationship between participatory online groups and formal organizations and suggested seven hypotheses. Furthermore, I empirically tested these hypotheses, focusing on the 2015 Nepal earthquake case (chapter 3). As a result, I found empirical evidence that supports that shared understanding and information technology improve the development of the relationship between participatory online groups and formal organizations. Moreover, research findings support that the development of the relationship enhances inter-organizational coordination. Lastly, I provide implications for future research (chapter 4). This dissertation is expected to contribute to bridging the disconnect between the emergency management literature and the crisis informatics literature. The theoretical insight from inter-organizational relations (IOR) theory provides another contribution.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Public Administration 201

Signals of Transition in Crisis Management: Insights from a Study of Social Media Use in Public Service Organizations

In crisis informatics, little attention is placed on how transitions occur between periods of crisis and non-crisis. The analysis of transition behaviors in organizations could respond to both the cyclicality of risk and crisis management, and the need for continuity of services provided to the community. In studying transitions, we focus on social media use as a support system. Thus, with the objective to gain an insight into how sociotechnical systems navigate through periods of crisis and non-crisis, we leverage individual experiences that rely on social media as a source of information in public service organizations and developers of social media analytics support tools. The main contribution of this study is the explanation and conceptualization on how transitions happen by framing social media as a support system of information for crisis management. In addition, we highlight the return to a new steady-state, an overlooked area of organizational transitions and continuity

Developing a Framework for Stigmergic Human Collaboration with Technology Tools: Cases in Emergency Response

Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), particularly social media and geographic information systems (GIS), have become a transformational force in emergency response. Social media enables ad hoc collaboration, providing timely, useful information dissemination and sharing, and helping to overcome limitations of time and place. Geographic information systems increase the level of situation awareness, serving geospatial data using interactive maps, animations, and computer generated imagery derived from sophisticated global remote sensing systems. Digital workspaces bring these technologies together and contribute to meeting ad hoc and formal emergency response challenges through their affordances of situation awareness and mass collaboration. Distributed ICTs that enable ad hoc emergency response via digital workspaces have arguably made traditional top-down system deployments less relevant in certain situations, including emergency response (Merrill, 2009; Heylighen, 2007a, b). Heylighen (2014, 2007a, b) theorizes that human cognitive stigmergy explains some self-organizing characteristics of ad hoc systems. Elliott (2007) identifies cognitive stigmergy as a factor in mass collaborations supported by digital workspaces. Stigmergy, a term from biology, refers to the phenomenon of self-organizing systems with agents that coordinate via perceived changes in the environment rather than direct communication. In the present research, ad hoc emergency response is examined through the lens of human cognitive stigmergy. The basic assertion is that ICTs and stigmergy together make possible highly effective ad hoc collaborations in circumstances where more typical collaborative methods break down. The research is organized into three essays: an in-depth analysis of the development and deployment of the Ushahidi emergency response software platform, a comparison of the emergency response ICTs used for emergency response during Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and a process model developed from the case studies and relevant academic literature is described

Ready or Not? Protecting the Public's Health From Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism, 2009

Based on ten indicators, assesses progress in the readiness of states, federal government, and hospitals to respond to public health emergencies, with a focus on the H1N1 flu. Outlines improvements and concerns in funding, accountability, and other areas

Blueprint Buffalo Action Plan: Regional Strategies for Reclaiming Vacant Properties in the City and Suburbs of Buffalo

Over a period of about nine months, the NVPC team conducted interviews and gathered insights that have resulted in this report. During the study period, Buffalo–Niagara emerged as a region broadly challenged by decades of disinvestment and population loss, but also as a close network of communities singularly blessed with a wealth of historic, transit-friendly, and affordable neighborhoods and commercial areas. Building on the City of Buffalo’s “asset management” strategy first proposed in 2004 by the Cornell Cooperative Extension Association—and now formally adopted by the Buffalo Common Council as part of its comprehensive 20-year plan for the city—the NVPC team sought to reexamine how the revitalization of Buffalo’s vacant properties could actually serve as a catalyst to address the region’s other most pressing problems: population loss, a weak real estate market in the inner city, signs of incipient economic instability in older suburbs, quality-of-life issues, school quality, and suburban sprawl