Understanding situational disabilities and situational awareness in disasters

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Universal Design of ICT for Emergency Management from Stakeholders’ Perspective - A Systematic Literature Review

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Disaster Risk Reduction for All? Understanding Intersectionality in Disaster Situations

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SEMA4A: An ontology for emergency notification systems accessibility

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Expert Systems with Applications. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2009 Elsevier B.V.Providing alert communication in emergency situations is vital to reduce the number of victims. Reaching this goal is challenging due to users’ diversity: people with disabilities, elderly and children, and other vulnerable groups. Notifications are critical when an emergency scenario is going to happen (e.g. a typhoon approaching) so the ability to transmit notifications to different kind of users is a crucial feature for such systems. In this work an ontology was developed by investigating different sources: accessibility guidelines, emergency response systems, communication devices and technologies, taking into account the different abilities of people to react to different alarms (e.g. mobile phone vibration as an alarm for deafblind people). We think that the proposed ontology addresses the information needs for sharing and integrating emergency notification messages over distinct emergency response information systems providing accessibility under different conditions and for different kind of users.Ministerio de Educación y Cienci

Community Segmentation and Inclusive Social Media Listening

Social media analytics provide a generalized picture of situational awareness from the conversations happening among communities present in social media channels that are that are, or risk being affected by crises. The generalized nature of results from these analytics leaves underrepresented communities in the background. When considering social media analytics, concerns, sentiment, and needs are perceived as homogenous. However, offline, the community is diverse, often segmented by age group, occupation, or language, to name a few. Through our analysis of interviews from professionals using social media as a source of information in public service organizations, we argue that practitioners might not be perceiving this segmentation from the social media conversation. In addition, practitioners who are aware of this limitation, agree that there is room for improvement and resort to alternative mechanisms to understand, reach, and provide services to these communities in need. Thus, we analyze current perceptions and activities around segmentation and provide suggestions that could inform the design of social media analytics tools that support inclusive public services for all, including persons with disabilities and from other disadvantaged groups.publishedVersionPaid open acces

Barrier considerations in crisis information systems

Good decision-making during crisis situations is crucial to ensure fortunate outcomes by minimizing loss and damage. There are many factors that compose good decision-making, but the level of situational awareness attained is undoubtedly a strong indica-tor for the quality of decisions. A high level of situational awareness provides the deci-sion maker with a viable basis for making favorable decisions. Thus, to decrease det-rimental outcomes of crisis situations, researching how to increase the level of situa-tional awareness is key. Information systems provide situational awareness by enabling users to obtain and share information. They are used extensively in crisis situations, particularly among crisis responders from police, health, and fire departments. Previous research indicates that there are barriers for using information systems to attain situational awareness in crisis situations. However, there is a lack of previous research that systematically un-covers these barriers and offers a holistic view on barriers and how to mitigate them. The goal of this thesis is to fill the research gap by uncovering barriers that can impede the use of information systems to attain situational awareness during crisis situations. In this thesis, a qualitative study was conducted where 14 crisis responders from police, health, and fire services at the tactical and operational level were interviewed. The coding and analysis of the collected data resulted in a total of 43 barriers and themes. All barriers were categorized into one of the following overarching themes: Cognitive, Physical and Technological. Additionally, the data analysis revealed instances of cause-and-effect relations between some of the barriers, meaning that the occurrence of one barrier could cause or amplify other barriers. The findings provide useful insight for further research and practice by highlighting aspects of information systems in cri-sis response that should be considered to improve situational awareness

Approaches to ‘vulnerability’ in eight European disaster management systems

Orru, K., Hansson, S., Gabel, F., Tammpuu, P., Krüger, M., Savadori, L., Meyer, S.F., Torpan, S., Jukarainen, P., Schieffelers, A., Lovasz, G. and Rhinard, M. (2022), Approaches to ‘vulnerability’ in eight European disaster management systems. Disasters, 46: 742-767. https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.12481While social vulnerability in the face of disasters has received increasing academic attention, relatively little is known about the extent to which that knowledge is reflected in practice by institutions involved in disaster management. In this study, we chart the practitioners’ approaches to disaster vulnerability in eight European countries: Germany, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Estonia. The study draws from a comparative document analysis and 95 interviews with disaster managers and reveals significant differences across countries in terms of the ontology of vulnerability, its sources, reduction strategies, and the allocation of related duties. To advance the debate and provide conceptual clarity, we put forward a model for explicating different understandings of vulnerability along the dimensions of human agency and technological structures as well as social support through private relations and state actors.acceptedVersio

Barrier considerations in crisis information systems

Good decision-making during crisis situations is crucial to ensure fortunate outcomes by minimizing loss and damage. There are many factors that compose good decision-mak-ing, but the level of situational awareness attained is undoubtedly a strong indicator for the quality of decisions. A high level of situational awareness provides the decision maker with a viable basis for making favorable decisions. Thus, to decrease detrimental out-comes of crisis situations, researching how to increase the level of situational awareness is key. Information systems provide situational awareness by enabling users to obtain and share information. They are used extensively in crisis situations, particularly among crisis re-sponders from police, health, and fire departments. Previous research indicates that there are barriers for using information systems to attain situational awareness in crisis situa-tions. However, there is a lack of previous research that systematically uncovers these barriers and offers a holistic view on barriers and how to mitigate them. The goal of this thesis is to fill the research gap by uncovering barriers that can impede the use of infor-mation systems to attain situational awareness during crisis situations. In this thesis, a qualitative study was conducted where 14 crisis responders from police, health, and fire services at the tactical and operational level were interviewed. The coding and analysis of the collected data resulted in a total of 43 barriers and themes. All barriers were categorized into one of the following overarching themes: Cognitive, Physical and Technological. Additionally, the data analysis revealed instances of cause-and-effect re-lations between some of the barriers, meaning that the occurrence of one barrier could cause or amplify other barriers. The findings provide useful insight for further research and practice by highlighting aspects of information systems in crisis response that should be considered to improve situational awareness