Design amid Emergency

This article presents the process for the “Design of services under the COVID19 emergency social protection plan”, drawn up by a team of researchers and designers from Porto Alegre in collaboration with the Porto Alegre City Government, and directed at the provision of essential benefits to homeless and other vulnerable people during the pandemic. The process was developed in an unprecedented way for the designers involved: without prior notice, within very short time frames and completely remotely, using only digital platforms. As such, the process was developed to respond to the emergency and amid the emergency. In this regard, the objective of the article is to discuss how to design amid emergency. The experience was guided by the methodological principles of action research and research through design. In addition to the design results, these being solutions aimed at the short, medium and long term, this article highlights the need, even in these circumstances, to aim for the prizing of difference, the suggestion of alternative views, social innovation, the systemic transformation of society and sustainability

Interactive graphical timelines as collaborative scenario management tools

Training emergency response decision makers using live, virtual and/or constructive simulations can be highly complex since certain situations can generate stimulusresponse cycles that depend significantly on unpredictable human judgments. In particular, effective training scenarios require a combination of content contributed via pre-authored scripts and content generated dynamically during the training exercise. Large-scale exercises require multiple domain experts contributing oversight and content to the scenario as it proceeds. Such real-time adaptation requires situational and group awareness based on an understanding of pre-scripted materials and the adaptations of others. This thesis describes the evolution and evaluation of a collaborative graphical timeline system, called the Scenario Timeline System (STS), which facilitates asynchronous and synchronous collaborative timeline management, and its application in large-scale, computer-supported emergency response training exercises