The engagement of informal volunteers in disaster management in Europe

Oliver Nahkur, Kati Orru, Sten Hansson, Pirjo Jukarainen, Miia Myllylä, Marco Krüger, Matthias Max, Lucia Savadori, Tor-Olav Nævestad, Sunniva Frislid Meyer, Abriel Schieffelers, Alexandra Olson, Gabriella Lovasz, Mark Rhinard, The engagement of informal volunteers in disaster management in Europe, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Volume 83, 2022, 103413, ISSN 2212-4209, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2022.103413. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221242092200632X)Informal volunteering is increasingly important in disaster management, but authorities remain cautious about collaborating with informal volunteers. Relatively little is known about the extent to which informal volunteers are integrated into European disaster management systems. We try to remedy this gap by examining Germany, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Estonia, focusing on (1) the policies and institutional arrangements for integrating informal volunteers, (2) the methods and tools used for their engagement, and (3) the presumed benefits and challenges of involving volunteers in disaster management. 95 expert interviews combined with desk research and four online table-top exercises in 2019–2020 involving analysis of 11 disaster cases show that disaster management systems in these countries are taking modest steps toward opening traditional command-and-control structures to informal volunteers. In Sweden and Norway, where volunteering is more common, the engagement of informal volunteers is somewhat regulated, providing an opportunity to formally insure them. In Belgium and Italy, the engagement of informal volunteers is not encouraged, but formal volunteering is encouraged. In Germany, Hungary, Finland, and Estonia, it is done on an ad hoc basis. In most of the countries studied, campaigns to raise volunteers’ awareness of support possibilities are backed up by practical training that focuses primarily on first aid. In all countries, except Germany, social media has been used by disaster management authorities to inform, guide, or register informal volunteers on an ad hoc basis. The studied cases indicate that disaster response is more efficient when procedures for informal volunteer engagement exist.publishedVersio

Design principles for conversational agents to support Emergency Management Agencies

Widespread mis- and disinformation during the COVID-19 social media “infodemic” challenge the effective response of Emergency Management Agencies (EMAs). Conversational Agents (CAs) have the potential to amplify and distribute trustworthy information from EMAs to the general public in times of uncertainty. However, the structure and responsibilities of such EMAs are different in comparison to traditional commercial organizations. Consequently, Information Systems (IS) design approaches for CAs are not directly transferable to this different type of organization. Based on semi-structured interviews with practitioners from EMAs in Germany and Australia, twelve meta-requirements and five design principles for CAs for EMAs were developed. In contrast to the traditional view of CA design, social cues should be minimized. The study provides a basis to design robust CAs for EMAs

Emergency Services Workforce 2030: Changing landscape literature review

The Changing Landscape Literature Review collates a high-level evidence base around seven major themes in the changing landscape (i.e., the external environment) that fire, emergency service, and rural land management agencies operate in, and which will shape workforce planning and capability requirements over the next decade. It is an output of the Workforce 2030 project and is one of two literature reviews that summarise the research base underpinning a high-level integrative report of emerging workforce challenges and opportunities, Emergency Services Workforce 2030. Workforce 2030 aimed to highlight major trends and developments likely to impact the future workforces of emergency service organisations, and their potential implications. The starting point for the project was a question: What can research from outside the sphere of emergency management add to our knowledge of wider trends and developments likely to shape the future emergency services workforce, and their implications? The seven themes included in the Changing Landscape Literature Review are: 1) demographic changes, 2) changing nature of work, 3) changes in volunteering, 4) physical technology, 5) digital technology, 6) shifting expectations, and changing risk. A second, accompanying literature review, the Changing Work Literature Review, focuses on another nine themes related to emergency service organisation’s internal workforce management approaches and working environments

Information Sharing and Coordination in Collaborative Flood Warning and Response Systems

The introduction of new information and communication technologies enables communities to share information and self-organize in the response to disasters. Crowd-sourcing approaches enable professional authorities to capture information from the ground in real-time. However, there is a gap between the professional and community-driven response: locally emergent initiatives may lack the overview needed for efficient coordination, while decisions taken by professionals may not consider the actual situation on the ground. We study this information sharing and coordination gap through the lens of urban flood early warning and response systems. Based on a literature review combining academic articles as well as guidelines and reports from practice, we derive design principles for these systems. Considering the case study of Accra, specific requirements are individuated. The design principles are then used to address the requirements, resulting in a set of functionalities for a collaborative flood warning and response system. These functionalities provide the basis for further development and evaluation

Robot Mindreading and the Problem of Trust

This paper raises three questions regarding the attribution of beliefs, desires, and intentions to robots. The first one is whether humans in fact engage in robot mindreading. If they do, this raises a second question: does robot mindreading foster trust towards robots? Both of these questions are empirical, and I show that the available evidence is insufficient to answer them. Now, if we assume that the answer to both questions is affirmative, a third and more important question arises: should developers and engineers promote robot mindreading in view of their stated goal of enhancing transparency? My worry here is that by attempting to make robots more mind-readable, they are abandoning the project of understanding automatic decision processes. Features that enhance mind-readability are prone to make the factors that determine automatic decisions even more opaque than they already are. And current strategies to eliminate opacity do not enhance mind-readability. The last part of the paper discusses different ways to analyze this apparent trade-off and suggests that a possible solution must adopt tolerable degrees of opacity that depend on pragmatic factors connected to the level of trust required for the intended uses of the robot

Social action on social media

This paper examines a new way of detecting and measuring social action, especially that which takes place below the radar. Abstract People try to help others in a wide number of ways. Taken together this is social action - the heart of civil society, and the foundation of a healthy one. However, some social action is hard to spot. It may be unregistered, be carried out with little or no income, or have little formal governance. This paper examines a new way of detecting and measuring social action – especially that which takes place below the radar. It uses a new methodology developed by CASM to use social media to spot, collect and measure social action that normally is carried out below the radar. It uses natural language processing algorithms to analyse, and sort large quantities of Tweets related to two key events: the flooding of 2014, and the launch of the Step up to Serve Campaign. This paper finds: Disasters, accidents and catastrophes are likely to create a explosions of Tweets too large to manually read. Some people will use Twitter to either offer or ask for help. This will often be specific to the disaster, spontaneous, and by people operating outside of any organization or charity. Twitter is a significant new forum which people will use in response to events to try to help each other. And it recommends: An Ebay for social action on social media’: Connecting social action supply with demand: When social action information is found, it could be centralized onto a real-time online platform, information exchange or brokerage hub, clearly related to a specific event and segmented either being offered

Emergency Services Workforce 2030

Australia’s emergency management sector sits within an environment that is becoming ever more complex, dynamic and uncertain. This is due to factors like a growing population, changing climate, social and cultural change, and the impact of new technologies. At the same time, the nature of how we work, in both paid and voluntary ways, is also changing. Work is greatly influenced by changes in technology and lifestyle, and by increasing levels of interconnectivity and cross-boundary collaboration. In this dynamic context, planning for the sustainability, effectiveness and wellbeing of the future emergency management workforce takes on considerable importance. The workforces of Australia’s fire, emergency services and rural land management agencies (referred to in this report as emergency service organisations) are crucial to Australia’s emergency management capability. These workforces include career and volunteer members, they also include first responders as well as professional, technical, and administrative support staff and volunteers (hereafter referred to collectively as the emergency service workforce). This report provides a consolidated, overview picture of emerging workforce challenges and opportunities likely to face emergency service organisations over the coming decade. It is a first step in bringing together the wide range of research that can inform and strengthen strategic workforce planning in these organisations. The report presents a high-level summary of key trends and developments highlighted in research from beyond the emergency management sphere. It identifies potential implications of these trends and developments for the future emergency service workforce. It also highlights key Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) affiliated research that can assist workforce planners to understand and respond to these implications. The bulk of the combined emergency service workforce are volunteers. According to the Productivity Commission, there were around 212,293 fire service volunteers and 23,897 state and territory emergency service volunteers across emergency service organisations in Australia in 2017-18 (Commonwealth of Australia, 2019). Volunteers therefore formed around 91% of the fire service workforce, and 97% of the state and territory emergency service workforce in that year. Furthermore, given the geographic size, changing risk profile, and demographic shifts in Australia, a heavy reliance on volunteers is likely to continue into the future. As such, volunteers and volunteering issues form a key component of the terrain covered in this report. While focusing on the emergency service workforce, this report is also based on recognition that the emergency services are part of a wider emergency management workforce that is also diverse and changing. The complete emergency management workforce extends far beyond the emergency services to include the volunteer and paid workforces of not-for-profits active in recovery, local governments, wider community sector and faith-based organisations, government departments, private businesses and more. Increasingly, under the influence of changing community expectations, and policy goals of community resilience, shared responsibility, and clear risk ownership (COAG, 2011; Commonwealth of Australia, 2018), ‘unaffiliated’ community members and groups are also recognised as a valuable part of the emergency management workforce (AIDR, 2017). Consequently, the future emergency management workforce is not going to be restricted to the affiliated volunteer and paid workforces of formal emergency service organisations. Therefore, this report considers the future emergency service workforce within the context of how it interacts with and forms a part of the wider emergency management workforce

Project report : Requirements specification

The SAMRISK project “Sharing incident and threat information for common situational understanding“ (INSITU) commenced in May 2019. The INSITU project develops solutions for establishing a common situational understanding in complex operations requiring collaboration between several agencies. This involves systematic analysis of existing information sources and defining the information elements that are critical to share in different phases of a crisis situation. In addition, the project will develop procedures and related tool support for efficient collection and integration of information. As part of this work, the project contributes to harmonisation of terminology across agencies to secure effective communication. A map-based interface for display of information from different digital map resources will be developed, as a basis for a common operational picture (COP). This solution will also support evaluation and learning from incidents and emergency exercises. Based on a review of related research, the report briefly summarises the state of the art for the areas focused in the project. Through interviews and discussions with emergency stakeholders, field observation during an exercise, and field visits at operations centres, current practice for information sharing and establishing a COP is analysed. Based on the expressed needs from the emergency stakeholders and our analysis of current practice, the report specifies a set of requirements for information sharing, harmonisation of terminology, use of common map resources, and technology support for evaluation and learning from incidents.publishedVersio

Combining brain-computer interfaces and assistive technologies: state-of-the-art and challenges

In recent years, new research has brought the field of EEG-based Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) out of its infancy and into a phase of relative maturity through many demonstrated prototypes such as brain-controlled wheelchairs, keyboards, and computer games. With this proof-of-concept phase in the past, the time is now ripe to focus on the development of practical BCI technologies that can be brought out of the lab and into real-world applications. In particular, we focus on the prospect of improving the lives of countless disabled individuals through a combination of BCI technology with existing assistive technologies (AT). In pursuit of more practical BCIs for use outside of the lab, in this paper, we identify four application areas where disabled individuals could greatly benefit from advancements in BCI technology, namely,“Communication and Control”, “Motor Substitution”, “Entertainment”, and “Motor Recovery”. We review the current state of the art and possible future developments, while discussing the main research issues in these four areas. In particular, we expect the most progress in the development of technologies such as hybrid BCI architectures, user-machine adaptation algorithms, the exploitation of users’ mental states for BCI reliability and confidence measures, the incorporation of principles in human-computer interaction (HCI) to improve BCI usability, and the development of novel BCI technology including better EEG devices