Effective Use of Information Systems for Emergency Management: a Representation Theory Perspective

Effective Use Theory (EUT) has emerged as a promising native Information Systems (IS) theory to understand a central phenomenon of interest to the discipline: the effective use of information systems. While EUT is widely accepted in operational control and management control contexts, its validity in chaotic environments has yet to be demonstrated. To contribute to the research program in EUT, scholars called for contextualizing and assessing EUT in chaotic environment, such as emergencies or crises events. This research seeks to apply EUT to understand the effective use of emergency information systems (EMIS). Seeking a grand theory of effective use in EMIS helps the onset of a structured research program and the development of a cumulative research tradition. That fosters EMIS as a would-be reference discipline for cross-disciplinary scholarship in emergency management. Moreover, assessing EUT in the edge context of emergencies, contributes to theory development by problematizing on assumptions that scholars have been considering unproblematic

A systematic literature review on information systems for disaster management and proposals for its future research agenda

Emergency management information systems (EMIS) are fundamental for responding to disasters effectively since they provide and process emergency-related information. A literature stream has emerged that corresponds with the increased relevance of the wide array of different information systems that have been used in response to disasters. In addition, the discussion around systems used primarily within responder organizations broadened to systems such as social media that are open to the general public. However, a systematic review of the EMIS literature stream is still missing. This literature review presents a timeline of EMIS research from 1990 up to 2021. It shows the types of information system scholars focused on, and what disaster response functions they supported. It furthermore identifies challenges in EMIS research and proposes future research directions

Anchor Contraction Effect in Interface Design: The Impact of Color Cues on Online Review Rating

Online review systems (ORS) adopt different UIs for collecting reviews. However, prior research suggests that these inconsistencies are non trivial. Design cues of the interval scale can influence individual’s interpretation of the scale and thus numeric evaluations. In fact, the design of anchor cues on interval scales varies widely among ORS by number of intervals, color-design, shape and labels. This research-in-progress investigates the cognitive impact of color cues in interpreting interval scales. Our preliminary results suggest that color cues – because of their emotional value – might in fact influence numeric evaluations. Distorted numeric evaluations are problematic for assessing the true quality of the business, whether from perspective customers or for self-assessment

A Protection-Motivation Perspective to Explain Intention to Use and Continue to Use Mobile Warning Systems

Mobile emergency warning apps are essential for effective emergency communication – of course, provided the population intends to use them. Drawing on protection motivation theory, the study validated a psychometric model to explain what motivates individuals to install a warning app for the first time and to keep using it over time. Multi-group covariance-based structural equation modeling was used to model the answers to a survey that measured the drivers of intention to begin using or intention to continue using a warning app. The model shows that, for both non-users and users, trust, social influence, and response efficacy positively and maladaptive rewards negatively affect intention to use and intention to continue use warning apps. However, perceived vulnerability influences only intention to use, whereas response cost and self-efficacy affect continued use intention. Hence, this study enhances the theoretical understanding of technology-enabled protection behaviors and provides practitioners with a list of factors to consider for pushing the adoption and continued use of emergency warning applications

Effective Use of Twitter Data in Crisis Management: The Challenge of Harnessing Geospatial Data

Could a Tweet save a life? The attention that public agencies and IS research have been dedicating to social media analysis in the last ten years seem to assume it could. Not only IS research in crisis-management is deeply oriented to harness the power of social media analysis, but public agencies are also following on this wave of enthusiasm for information extraction from social media (Twitter in particular). Our paper is an attempt to challenge some of the assumptions behind the ability to use crisis-related information on social media effectively, in particular, geospatial data. In particular, we suggest that current estimates about the volume of georeferenced data might be overoptimistic and ~35% of the georeferenced might not be precise enough to be used effectively in crises response initiatives such as localizing victims in the aftermath of an \ earthquake

Digital Volunteers for Emergency Management: Lessons from the 2016 Central Italy Earthquake

In several recent crises, digital volunteers’ organizations showed a remarkable ability to support government agencies during relief operations. Digital volunteers can collaborate and contribute remotely, supporting information collection and presentation from a variety of digital data streams sources (e.g., social media, news feeds, physical sensors). From a Representation Theory perspective, we frame their effort to help government agencies collecting actionable information as one to achieve a better (digital) representation of a crisis. However, Representation Theory (RT) has not been applied yet to a chaotic environment – such as the aftermath of a disaster – and has not been proven yet to be a valid theory of Information Systems (IS) use in that context. For RT, individuals pursue IS effective use iterating over learning and adaptation actions. Nonetheless, we posit that the time constraints of chaotic environments uniquely affect the circularity of learning-adaptation processes leading to learning driven or adaptation driven initiatives. Our paper discusses a case study of the latter type

Temporary Employees? Financial and Cultural Benefits of Supporting International Faculty to Pursue Continued Employment at NSU

Objectives: Generate awareness regarding the negative organizational, economic, and cultural implications of current NSU employment policies and practices targeting NSU international faculty. Propose solutions to advance organizational economic savings and promote a culture of long-term employment, belonging, & inclusion amongst NSU international faculty. Encourage positive change of NSU employment policies and practices targeting NSU international faculty. Target audience: everybody

data

A repo with all the datasets I've used for my researc

Effective Use of Information Systems for Emergency Management: A Representation Theory Perspective

What is the role of IS in scholarship on Emergency Management (EM)? To respond to this question, this literature review moves through two steps. First, we present an overview of current theories that dominate IS scholarship in EM. We discuss some of thei