Situational Awareness & Incident Management SAIM2014. 5th JRC ECML Crisis Management Technology Workshop

The 5th JRC ECML Crisis Management Technology Workshop on Software and data formats used in Crisis Management Rooms and Situation Monitoring Centres for information collection and display, organised by the European Commission Joint Research Centre in collaboration with the DRIVER Consortium Partners, took place in the European Crisis Management Laboratory (ECML) of the JRC in Ispra, Italy, from 16 to 18 June 2014. 32 participants from stakeholders in civil protection, academia, and industry attended the workshop. The workshop's purpose was to present, demonstrate, and explore IT solutions for Situation Awareness and Incident Management and the related design considerations, applied within the context of humanitarian aid and civil protection. During the first day the demonstrators set up in the JRC environment. A week before they were provided the contents to be processed. The second day was devoted to the presentations including: - Beyond the Myth of Control: toward the Trading Zone by Kees Boersma & Jeroen Wolbers, Department of Organization Sciences, VU University of Amsterdam - The organizers’ descriptions, the JRC and the DRIVER project - The software to be demonstrated on day three - Data exchange Challenges (From computer-readable data to meaningful information) by Christian Flachberger, FREQUENTIS AGJRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen

Technical Assistance for Severely Motor- and Multiple Impaired Children

Up from a certain degree of impairment motor- and multiple disabled children rarely are able to use conventional environmental control and augmentative communication systems. To attain this ability, in many cases customer tailored user-interfaces plus a long-time training process is necessary. Even learning the relation between reason and effect and experiencing self-effectiveness (being able to make something happen in the environment) is the first big challenge and often an entire new experience. Hence, a technical system capable to meet the needs of these users has to fulfill three criteria: (1) give optimal support to the training-process; (2) support the facilitators with a tool to easily adapt the system to the rapidly changing user needs; (3) be capable to grow from first experiencing self-effectiveness up to a multi-functional multi-purpose technical aid. The paper discusses an innovative technical assistance system developed at the Vienna University of Technology which especially has regard to multiple impairments and the trainingprocess. Presently the authors look back on one and a half years of practical evaluation of the technical assistance system in a support center for motor- and multiple impaired persons. After introducing the concept of the technical assistance system and pointing out its special feature

Crowdtasking – A New Concept for Volunteer Management in Disaster Relief

Part 4: Environmental Applications in Risk and Crises ManagementInternational audienceBased on governmental institutions and strong volunteer organizations, Austria provides a comprehensive and well developed emergency response system. As an important factor for the maintenance of the current quality standard of Austria’s protection and emergency system, the further engagement of voluntariness has to be ensured and enhanced in the light of the ongoing societal change. On the one hand, the involvement of new media provides opportunities to expand the organizations’ service portfolio to create a broader participation for citizens’ engagement; on the other hand, long lasting and formal memberships are often a challenge for the current dynamic lifestyle. To face this situation, the involvement of new media services for volunteer management in order to enable new modes of voluntary binding is a promising strategically effort. A new process called “crowdtasking” dedicated to the improvement of volunteer management applying new media is discussed; new processes of volunteer management are presented by exemplary initiatives of humanitarian non-governmental organizations, such as the Austrian Red Cross