Perceived Risk and Resilience in the Face of Natural Disasters: A Study of Hospital

Though hospital information systems have been extensively studied as a technology and there is now a growing body of literature in the area of infrastructure interdependencies, the dependencies of civil and built infrastructure on the health care information infrastructure (HII) is understudied. In particular, there is no study to our knowledge that addresses the issue of Hospital Information Infrastructure in the context of disasters. This study explores how an organization’s information systems infrastructure is affected by disasters and examines the relationship between organizational resilience and information infrastructure effectiveness by using conceptual model

Understanding cognitive differences in processing competing visualizations of complex systems

Node-link diagrams are used represent systems having different elements and relationships among the elements. Representing the systems using visualizations like node-link diagrams provides cognitive aid to individuals in understanding the system and effectively managing these systems. Using appropriate visual tools aids in task completion by reducing the cognitive load of individuals in understanding the problems and solving them. However, the visualizations that are currently developed lack any cognitive processing based evaluation. Most of the evaluations (if any) are based on the result of tasks performed using these visualizations. Therefore, the evaluations do not provide any perspective from the point of the cognitive processing required in working with the visualization. This research focuses on understanding the effect of different visualization types and complexities on problem understanding and performance using a visual problem solving task. Two informationally equivalent but visually different visualizations - geon diagrams based on structural object perception theory and UML diagrams based on object modeling - are investigated to understand the cognitive processes that underlie reasoning with different types of visualizations. Specifically, the two visualizations are used to represent interdependent critical infrastructures. Participants are asked to solve a problem using the different visualizations. The effectiveness of the task completion is measured in terms of the time taken to complete the task and the accuracy of the result of the task. The differences in the cognitive processing while using the different visualizations are measured in terms of the search path and the search-steps of the individual. The results from this research underscore the difference in the effectiveness of the different diagrams in solving the same problem. The time taken to complete the task is significantly lower in geon diagrams. The error rate is also significantly lower when using geon diagrams. The search path for UML diagrams is more node-dominant but for geon diagrams is a distribution of nodes, links and components (combinations of nodes and links). Evaluation dominates the search-steps in geon diagrams whereas locating steps dominate UML diagrams. The results also show that the differences in search path and search steps for different visualizations increase when the complexity of the diagrams increase. This study helps to establish the importance of cognitive level understanding of the use of diagrammatic representation of information for visual problem solving. The results also highlight that measures of effectiveness of any visualization should include measuring the cognitive process of individuals while they are doing the visual task apart from the measures of time and accuracy of the result of a visual task

What Support Does Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Offer to Organizational Improvisation During Crisis Response ?

While evidence of the exceedingly important role of technology in organizational life is commonplace, academics have not fully captured the influence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on crisis response. A substantive body of knowledge on technology and crisis response already exists and keeps developing. Extensive research is on track to highlight how technology helps to prepare to crisis response and develop service recovery plans. However, some aspects of crisis response remain unknown. Among all the facets of crisis response that have been under investigation for some years, improvisation still challenges academics as a core component of crisis response. In spite of numerous insights on improvisation as a cognitive process and an organizational phenomenon, the question of how improvisers do interact together while improvising remains partly unanswered. As a result, literature falls short of details on whether crisis responders can rely on technology to interact when they have to improvise collectively. This dissertation therefore brings into focus ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response in two steps: We first address this question from a general standpoint by reviewing literature. We then propose an in depth and contextualized analysis of the use of a restricted set of technologies – emails, faxes, the Internet, phones - during the organizational crisis provoked by the 2003 French heat wave. Our findings offer a nuanced view of ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response. Our theoretical investigation suggests that ICTs, in a large sense, allow crisis responders to improvise collectively. It reports ICT properties - graphical representation, modularity, calculation, many-to-many communication, data centralization and virtuality – that promote the settling of appropriate conditions for interaction during organizational improvisation in crisis response. In the empirical work, we provide a more integrative picture of ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response by retrospectively observing crisis responders’ interactions during the 2003 French heat wave. Our empirical findings suggest that improvisation enables crisis responders to cope with organizational emptiness that burdens crisis response. However, crisis responders’ participation in organizational improvisation depends on their communicative genres. During the 2003 French heat wave crisis, administrative actors who had developed what we call a “dispassionate” communicative genre in relation to their email use, barely participated in organizational improvisation. Conversely, improvisers mainly communicated in what we call a “fervent” communicative genre. Therefore, our findings reveal that the ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response is mediated by the communication practices and strategies that groups of crisis responders develop around ICT tools

Quel apport des technologies de l’information et de la communication (tic) a l’improvisation organisationnelle durant la réponse à la crise ?.

Notre travail doctoral, structuré autour de deux études théoriques et d’une étude empirique, explore l’apport des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (TIC) à l’improvisation organisationnelle lors de la réponse à la crise. La première étude confirme la diversité de la littérature sur l’improvisation et révèle que les auteurs adoptent des postures différentes à quatre étapes du processus de recherche. La deuxième étude propose cinq mécanismes organisationnels fondamentaux au développement de l’improvisation organisationnelle. A partir de cette proposition, nous identifions six propriétés des TIC qui soutiennent l’improvisation de crise. Enfin, notre étude rétrospective qualitative du cas de la réponse à la crise provoquée par la canicule de 2003 en Île-de-France montre que le développement de l’improvisation, réponse au vide organisationnel qui pèse sur la réponse à la crise, dépend non seulement des propriétés des TIC mais également des genres de communication développés par les acteurs autour des moyens de communication. Durant la canicule, le genre fervent a facilité l’improvisation parmi les opérationnels. Au contraire, le genre dépassionné, prédominant dans les échanges électroniques, a freiné la participation des acteurs administratifs à l’improvisation. Certains d’entre eux sont tout de même parvenus à participer à l’improvisation en adaptant le genre dépassionné lors de leur utilisation du fax. Si les TIC facilitent certaines interactions, la faculté des acteurs à improviser dépend également de leur capacité à adapter leurs genres de communication.We explore Information and Communication Technology (ICT) support to organizational improvisation during crisis response by completing three studies. The first study confirms diversity in research on improvisation and suggests that author’s perspectives on improvisation diverge with respect to four tasks within the research process. The second study identifies five constituents of organizational improvisation. In addition, it reports six ICT properties that promote the settling of appropriate conditions for interaction during organizational improvisation in crisis response. In the empirical work, we provide a more integrative picture of ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response by retrospectively observing crisis responders’ interactions during the 2003 French heat wave. Our empirical findings suggest that improvisation enables crisis responders to cope with organizational emptiness that burdens crisis response. However, crisis responders’ participation in organizational improvisation depends on their communicative genres. During the 2003 French heat wave crisis, administrative actors who had developed what we call a dispassionate communicative genre in relation to their email use, barely participated in organizational improvisation. Conversely, improvisers mainly communicated in what we call a fervent communicative genre. Therefore, our findings reveal that the ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response is mediated by the communication practices and strategies that groups of crisis responders develop around ICT tools.Ile-de-France; Gestion de l'information; Vagues de chaleur; Comportement organisationnel; Nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication;

Entwicklung einer indikatorenbasierten Methodik zur Vulnerabilitätsanalyse für die Bewertung von Risiken in der industriellen Produktion

Die Arbeit stellt die Entwicklung einer Methode zur Bewertung externer industrieller Risiken vor, die der Analyse indirekter Risikoeffekte auf räumlicher Ebene dient und verschiedene Risikoarten berücksichtigt. Zur Bewertung des industriellen Risikos wird die Analyse der Vulnerabilität herangezogen und über ein hierarchisches Indikatorenmodell abgebildet. Um Auswirkungen von Abhängigkeiten und Unsicherheiten zu berücksichtigen, werden Methoden zur Abhängigkeits- und Sensitivitätsanalyse entwickelt