In 2007, the Austrian Red Cross has formed Team Österreich to improve the management of the loosely organised volunteers. This has proved very useful during the subsequent large scale floods and currently numbers over 35000 pre-registered members. Subsequently, the ARC has teamed up with AIT and Frequentis to develop an experimental platform and methodology that will allow individual management of such volunteers. These slides have been presented on IPRED IV conference (Israel, January 2016). They introduce the resulting crowdtasking methodology and software and explain to potential "volunteers" what they should expect if and when they join the crowdtasking experiment.

1. Driving Innovation in Crisis Management for European Resilience
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under
grant agreement no 609043
IPRED IV Conference, Jan 2016, Tel Aviv
CROWDTASKING IN CRISIS SITUATIONS
PRESENTATION BY: DENIS HAVLIK (AIT), INON MOSHKOWITZ
(MDA), JASMIN PIELORZ (AIT), LUDWIG KASTNER (FRQ)

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Introduction
 Ubiquitous ICT
changes volunteerism
 Civil society self-organises
into “smart crowd” (good) or
”smart mobs” (bad)
 Volunteers use social media
for grassroots efforts
 Increasing volunteer
convergence on- and off-line
Grassroots communities in Austria and Germany during refugee crisis 2015

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Hierarchy and the smart crowd?
Pyramidal organisation,
goals, rules, planning,
training…
Trusted, reliable,
accountable.
Organic ad-hoc
organisation, leadership
unclear, fluid goals,
capacity unknown.
Trust? Reliability?
Accountability?

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“Taming the crowd” in Austria
Team Österreich volunteers in the field. Fotos by Austrian Red Cross
http://application.oe3.fm/teamoesterreich/karte.html
 Institutional volunteers are the backbone
of fireman & medical first responders
 “New volunteers” in Team Österreich
 less/no training, less/no hierarchic
organisation, but large numbers
 Filling sandbags, clean-up,
distributing provisions, etc.
 Cooperation of Austrian Red Cross
and nationwide media
 Successfully in operation since 2007

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Evolution of volunteer management
Only institutional volunteers are good
volunteers! (old-school)
Acknowledge self-
organised volunteers, but
no individual steering
(crowdsourcing)
Crowdtasking
& resilient
communities

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Crowdtasking @AIT
 Crowdtasking = assign specific tasks to selected, local volunteers
 FP7 Project ENVIROFI (2011): “we can use volunteers more efficiently with crowdtasking!”
 National project RE-ACTA (ARK, Frequentis & AIT, 2013): “how to apply crowdtasking principle to crisis
management?”
 Part of DRIVER experimentation
(SP3 and SP4): “how can we scale crowdtasking?” “What are the best suited tasks?” “What else is the method
good for?”

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IPRED IV experiment at a glance
During the conference
 Registration (online & offline at
MDA boot)
 Getting familiar with the app
(volunteers)
 Getting familiar with backend
(MDA - coordinators)
During the final IPRED IV exercise
 perform some more realistic tasks
(e.g. report the situation, look for
victims, inform other citizens,
evacuate ...) and report on their
experiences with the app.
Goals
 Examine usability of tools and
validity of crowdtasking concept
 Evaluation of backend by MDA
staff; mobile app. by volunteers
Participant acting as crowdtasking coordinator during field exercise

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IPRED IV experiment: how to join
This QR code links to:
http://crowdtasker.ait.ac.at/por/#/
exp/israel
Alternatively:
https://play.google.com/store/sear
ch?q=crowdtasker&c=apps
TODO:
 Read the explanation
 Accept conditions to get the
User Registration Code
 Install the app (android only!)
 Register (registration code!)
 Let the app run in the
background

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Crowdtasker App: online registration
 “create account”
 Accept to get the
User Registration
Code
 Install the app
(android only!)
 Register
 Fill in the profile
information

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Crowdtasker App: views & workflow
 Several views exist
(explore them!)
 But: all important
messages appear at
main (“news”) view
when needed.
Note:
This App is still
experimental.
We are interested to
know if it works
reliably on various
devices – especially
while running in a
background!

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Crowdtasker App: event activation
 “event” is used to
invite volunteers to
participate
 Events invitations
filter based on
volunteers position
& skills
 We will define
several events in Tel
Aviv & at final
exercise site.

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Crowdtasker App: tasks
 “tasks” are used to
ask volunteers to
perform specific
activities
 Each task is
contained within
specific event
 We can ask for a
specific number of
responses (e.g. “3
volunteers”) per
task
 Volunteer can
accept or reject
task

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Crowdtasker App: tasks (2)

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Crowdtasker App: notifications
 Notifications are
triggered upon
entering some geo-
polygon
 Provide information
on the area (e.g.
“dangerous area,
keep out of it”)
 No response from
volunteers

15. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under
grant agreement no 609043
Driving Innovation in Crisis Management for European Resilience
THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING!
Denis.havlik@ait.ac.at