Leveraging A Wiki To Enhance
Virtual Collaboration In The Emergency Domain
War, earthquake, winds, fire, famine, the plague,
year after year, it’s been nothing but disasters.
Rashomon
need to be prepared for and potentially act as
Abstract
responders in emergencies has been greatly
raised by emergencies such as the terror attacks
In a crisis situation, critical success factors
of, 9-11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Southeast
include good preparedness, the availability of
Asia Tsunami. Global climate change and
trustworthy information and reliable people, and
political events are likely to lead to more and
the responders' ability to improvise with the
larger disasters in the future. In this paper we
available, functioning tools. Wikis can be used as
argue that a number of developments are coming
collaborative group support systems to support
together to make wikis for communities of
these activities, especially for communities of
practice a likely form of communication forum
practice that must operate as high reliability
to support public information seeking about and
organizations. The advantages of using a wiki
response to potential and actual emergencies.
are especially beneficial in volatile
These technological forces include the
environments, such as those in the emergency
widespread availability of the World Wide Web
domain, where critical real-time decision making
and wireless communications, the Free and Open
is required. An international wiki -
Software Systems (FOSS) movement, and the
emergenciWiki.org - has been created and is
consequent availability of wiki software to local
being used by both practitioners and academics.
and international communities of practice
The conclusions include that wiki features and
concerned with emergency management.
functionality, which are important for safety-
The goal of this paper is to describe the
critical work, should add a minimum of
ways in which wikis can be an appropriate
bureaucratic overhead while helping to establish
platform to support the communication needs of
trust and a sense of purpose and community
Communities of Practice (COP) in the
among the users, strengthening each individual
emergency preparedness and response domain.
user's accountability for their actions, or easing
These COPs can link citizen-participants as well
the evaluation of information reliability.
as organizations, which is important because the
first major responders in disasters are usually
1. Introduction
community members and local volunteer
organizations [15]. Disasters do not respect
A multi-organizational collaboration
man-made boundaries of towns, counties, and
approach is both effective and efficient in
states; thus, emergency response often involves
disaster and emergency related work including
groups that have never worked together before.
preparedness, warning the affected populations,
An important requirement for any collaborative
mitigating the effects, timely response and
system support is the ability to network
learning for the future. Global goals today are
seamlessly across organizational and geographic
shifting towards disaster prevention [1].
boundaries, since whom will be involved in any
Therefore, the need is growing even more
large-scale disaster is unpredictable [23].
intensive for successful multinational, often
Working well together in a time-constrained,
multilingual collaboration within all crisis
safety-critical situation requires familiarity with
related fields, whether the scope of the incident
the people, the context and the goals, and tasks
is limited or local (emergency), regional and in
and tools involved. Yet few organizations,
some respect resource-overwhelming (disaster),
counties, or nations can afford frequent physical
or catastrophic to an unprecedented degree
meetings of all essential crisis preparedness
(mega-event).
professionals, let alone volunteers. As an
In recent years, citizen awareness of the
example, in one U.S. county that we are familiar

with, there are two emergency management domain. Wiki technology has functionality that
professionals, 70 other local government can be uniquely advantageous for such
professionals, and 300 citizen volunteers (mostly collaboration but, at present, is missing from
full time employed) who form the team to deal most computer mediated communication systems
with emergencies. Alternatives to face-to-face used in the domain.
communication and training have therefore been Effective collaboration occurs when the
developed, and various computer supported participants share common ground, members are
cooperative work (CSCW) systems or computer trusted, and the team has the same goal. Trust in
mediated communication (CMC) systems are virtual teams develops as swift trust [14] a type
today an established part of the disaster and of quickly developing trust that relies on cues
emergency field not only in that county, but also (e.g., roles) other than a history of working
in most developed countries and in a growing together. Communication is key to developing
number of developing ones. and maintaining swift trust [2] and it is most
The literature is filled with examples of likely to develop at moderate levels of
proposals for structuring group communication interdependence [14] Thus, the development of
with technology (e.g. computer mediated swift trust is more likely to develop during times
communication, groupware, group decision of calm rather than times of crisis. A new team
support systems). CSCW systems for crisis formed out of trained Emergency Management
preparedness and management are called by Professionals with the shared goal beyond
many acronyms, such as DEMS, DERMIS, representing their original organizations and
ERIS, and ISCRAM. These systems have trained to understand the operation of HRO's [21,
traditionally been developed as proprietary 24] will have a \"deference to expertise\" that will
software, for a specific administrative or make swift trust a starting assumption.
geopolitical context, to be used by professionals However, people need to use these systems
for response, training, or both. Interoperability before disasters occur to become comfortable
between different systems has often been a with the technology [23]. There is a need for
problem, and the demands have been activities such as training games and more active
intensifying for standardization, interoperability, community participation in planning efforts as
and the openness and reusability of solutions [6, well as interagency communication and support
10, 16]. Particularly impressive has been the to build comfort with the technology and build
volunteer development of the free and open trust among members of the community who are
source software (FOSS) Sahana, the world's first not active professionals in the field of emergency
multi-functional disaster management software, management.
which is available at no cost [3]. The Sahana In the remainder of this paper, after relating
project is one of many examples of emergent wikis conceptually to CSCW/ Group Support
tool creation, which is characteristic for crisis Systems literature, we describe how wikis are
response. currently used for crisis related collaboration and
The use of wikis to support group cooperation. We present how many of the
collaboration is a new and fertile field. Wikis original Wiki systems' socio-technical
are increasingly being used to support such weaknesses have been addressed so that wikis
collaboration in some domains, but the have become better adapted to the requirements
theoretical foundation for their use is still being of safety-critical work. As an example of
laid. Wikis may be a solution to the need for incorporating lessons learned from older general-
collaborative electronic space that can support purpose and disaster and emergency related
dynamically changing, real-time emergency wikis we present the emergenciWiki.org project,
response needs. Free and open source wiki a FOSS Wiki for both practitioners and
software platforms are increasingly available, academics worldwide. We justify the design
which makes them especially attractive for use principles chosen for emergenciWiki.org based
by potentially large groups of emergency domain on the literature and describe how the user
collaborators with changing membership. Such community and the activities and projects have
platforms provide a low or no cost approach to developed thus far. We then describe
producing software that supports emergency emergenciWiki, which strives to answer the
domain collaborative needs. The research various information and communication needs of
reported in this paper is important because it its members and readers in a dynamic,
identifies the potential for Wiki support of evolutionary manner.
critical collaborative needs in the emergency

together to solve problems or to reach a
2. Literature Review
consensus on an item. The third task type
concerns groups having to negotiate, sometimes
2.1. Group Decision Support Systems
through conflict resolution, in order for
subgroups to agree to a set of terms in order to
Group decision support systems can be
reach a common goal when they have conflicting
developed and understood using a framework
needs/requirements (e.g., the need for a limited
based on the size of the group, the task type
resource from a single pool where neither group
given to the group and the distribution of group
can be totally satisfied). The fourth and last task
members [4]. Research has shown that it is a bit
type concerns groups implementing a solution.
more complicated than this; different tasks
Traditionally, after a solution is implemented, a
require different tools to support the roles that
team either moves on to a new problem or is
will be needed [9].
reconfigured so that interaction patterns either
Distributed groups can consist, for example,
are disbanded or changed. With a wiki, a
of a few dedicated people co-authoring, as in the
transcript of communications remains. The
case of this research effort, or medium size
organization can learn from it and, should the
groups such as classes of 10-30 students, or large
problem resurface, build on it to solve the new
groups consisting of hundreds of people working
issues.
together for a company or in a global relief
effort. When thousands of experts are working
2.2. Wiki Categories and Participant
on complex problems, these very large groups
Roles
can have a combination of small and medium
size subgroups, all interacting. This requires
Wikis come in all shapes and sizes. They
different support for each size group. Small
can be categorized into six types of wikis defined
groups coauthoring can function well in a non-
by the groups who use them and the membership
structured environment, but as the group size
rights. The wiki type dictates which users have
increases, so too does the need for structure, so
visibility and editing privileges of the wiki
as to effectively manage the information content
pages. This influences the information and
produced and to minimize information overload.
knowledge contained on the wiki. This is of
[22].
utmost importance when decision making is
McGrath (1984) has identified four task
concerned with time critical information used by
types. The first task type concerns groups,
emergency management groups.
which are interacting to generate creative ideas
(i.e., brainstorming) or ideas for planning. The
second task type concerns groups working
Table 1. Wiki Categorizations
Type Access User Restrictions
I Fully Open No restrictions
II Lockable All pages public, but editing restricted in various
ways
III Gate Some pages public, others restricted to registered
users.
IV Members All users must be registered; may involve further
only group restrictions
V Fire walled All users must be on specific network
VI Personal Notebook usage on one system or private web site
directory
useful to categorize wikis, this categorization is
In general, there are six types of wikis based only on two functional dimensions and
categorized by Leuf and Cunningham according ignores many important dimensions that reflect
to the security obtained through user access the task and user group size, especially when the
restrictions [12]; see Table 1. Although it is task(s) involve time-critical analysis and

decision-making. Using a framework that means that the source code is freely available,
addresses the task and people, such as the one hopefully documented, and people are able to
described in the section above, can improve submit additions to the source to some sort of
understanding of the differences and central depository for use by others and review
appropriateness of different wikis for a particular by a team of dedicated developers.
use. Today, there are multiple types of FOSS
The roles that people have in a virtual team available. For education, there’s Moodle and
determine the functionality required and the vTutor; for Forums, there’s phpBB, Simple
permissions that need to be provided. For Machine Forum (SMF), vBulliten; and for
example, [20] only certain roles may be able to: Information Management Software there’s
1. Contribute discussion topics Mambo and Joomla. And for a nominal fee you
2. Contribute replies to discussion topics can set up your own domain and eCommerce
3. Create polls or votable items with full shopping capabilities using
4. Vote on contributed topics or replies OsCommerce, ZenCart, Cube Cart or CS Cart.
5. Write, edit, or read selected groups of The large number of available wiki platforms
items includes several free and open source wikis, too.
6. Index items for consistency in retrieval
7. Edit or Delete items 2.4. Free and Open Source Wikis
8. Terminate items based upon age or
conditions Free and open source (FOSS) wiki platforms
9. Record actions or decisions taken as differ from each other by functionality, look and
events feel, and target user groups. The diversity of
10. Record or trigger actions to be taken FOSS wikis available makes it possible for an
(event management) organization to find a wiki that is appropriate for
its needs. Choosing a wiki should be guided by
2.3. Free and Open Source Software the needs of the user group. FOSS wiki
platforms have been created to support various
(FOSS)
group sizes. Simplistic and familiar for large
groups (MediaWiki), more functionality for
Free and open source software (FOSS) has
medium size groups of wiki savvy users
its roots in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s,
(TikiWiki), and collaborative functionality of
when early general-purpose interactive
authoring for small groups (DocuWiki). Other
computers became available to the first
considerations for wiki platform choice include
university students, who would freely exchange
the technical expertise of the users as well as task
their programming ideas and source code. The
requirements. An emergency wiki should use a
modern open source movement was founded by
platform that meets the specific user and task
Richard M. Stallman, who worked in the
requirements for its target user group. Something
Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT)
that the users can use is better than something
Artificial Intelligence (AI) laboratory during the
that is confusing, no matter how impressive the
1970’s and early 1980’s. [13] The first FOSS to
features are. Ease of use is critical, especially in
become internationally well known in the mid-
communication during stressful times.
1990ies was the Linux operating system [19].
MediaWiki, TikiWiki, and DokuWiki are
The key to the freedom and openness of
noteworthy examples of open source wiki
most FOSS today is the GNU General Public
platforms because of their robustness and diverse
License (GNU-GPL), envisioned and authored
functionality. MediaWiki provides the platform
by Stallman in 1986-1989 [17], which allows
for Wikipedia, the most well-known and
anyone to do anything they please with a piece of
successful wiki to date. MediaWiki is suitable for
software that is licensed with GNU-GPL. (This
a large, diverse user group because it is easy to
includes selling it or new versions of the
use, has an intuitive user interface, and can
software, but only if the developer licenses all
support multiple user languages. Its functionality
new versions of the software with the GNU-
includes file uploading, searching, discussion
GPL, too). This makes FOSS \"virally\" or
forums, edit tracking and indexing of content
\"genetically\" free-and-open, as software licensed
items. TikiWiki provides more media rich
with GNU-GPL can not legally be incorporated
functionality, albeit at a cost to user interface
into proprietary software: even if a customer
simplicity. Its functionality includes the
pays for the derivative, the source code must be
capability to create web sites and intranets so it
released to the world [27]. Open source thus

would be beneficial for users needing to engage fundamental human communication processes,
in time-critical decision making. In addition to or for applied research goals, such as to improve
the same basic functionality as in MediaWiki, the system and its ability to service a specific
TikiWiki offers features such as blogs, community.
chatrooms, poll taking, FAQs, calendars, file and Defined by Wenger, et al [25],
image gallery and forums. However, the “Communities of practice are groups of people
complexity of its interface makes it unsuitable who share a concern, a set of problems, or a
for large user groups with technically novice passion about a topic, and who deepen their
members. DokuWiki is targeted towards smaller knowledge and expertise in this area by
groups with collaborative documentation needs. interacting on an ongoing basis.” It is not
It has a syntax that allows for data files, stored in assumed that anybody or group fits this
a central repository as plain text files, to be requirement simply by definition from being a
readable from outside of the wiki. No database participant in the domain. For example, just
is needed, which makes DokuWiki fairly simple being the head of the emergency management
to install, use, and maintain. group, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are
knowledgeable or even passionate about your
work. It is critical that the group working
3. Leveraging a Wiki
together be knowledgeable. In cases where
people are hired based on ‘who you know’ and
There are numerous characteristics inherent
not ‘what you know’ or more commonly referred
in personnel who work in crisis management
to as a ‘good ole boy’ system, only collective
domain be it academic, real world, or
stupidity will concur. [18]. So, that the members
governmental related. Members of a community
of a group are committed and knowledgeable is
of practice or virtual team working together in
no small assumption, but a critical element to the
preparedness and response, simulations,
overall leveraging.
regulation or policy issues, can leverage a wiki’s
capabilities far beyond that of any single
3.2. High Reliability Organizations
emergency domain group. There are numerous
assumptions to be made which are not to be
Another assumption which goes hand-in-
taken lightly. Groups that have the potential to
hand with members of a COP, but is not
leverage a wiki adhere to characteristics found in
inclusive and thus must not be assumed as true,
communities of practice and high reliability
is that the participants practice consciousness or
organizations. Taking into account that the
be mindful of their environment and be critical
world can benefit greatly from a global effort
about their own state [24]. This is a philosophy
creating a global intelligence, virtual
employed in a high reliability organization
organizations can further the aforementioned
(HRO). Members of the group must be aware of
strengths, combining distributed groups for a
their surroundings, test themselves and use
global collective intelligence [8].
mistakes as an opportunity for learning. Groups
of emergency responders and academicians can
3.1. Communities of Practice
be passive just as any individual can be in any
group. Therefore, a level of consciousness is a
In online communities, conciseness and
key variable to an HRO and is not to be assumed
clear structuring of ideas and concepts in a form
for more people are passive to their surroundings
where replies can pin point what is specifically
on the general. To not only be in an
being discussed or addressed is extremely
environment, but to observe it, question states
desirable for reducing information overload and
and have a need to satisfy any questions that
facilitating a clear discussion. Members who are
could arise is a necessary condition for an HRO.
verbose and unfocused in their comments usually
Errors or problems are never normalized,
engender negative reactions in working groups
trivialized and passed off as non-consequential.
with goals and tasks to accomplish [8].
For example, a single drop of water may not
Capturing the communications of a
appear to be a big threat, but when it’s a single
Community of Practice in electronic form
drop of water where water is not supposed to be,
provides an opportunity to analyze content of
then it could be perceived as a small indicator of
real life communications.to gain a much better
a much greater problem. This is an assertive
understanding of what is taking place for
approach that seeks out various scenarios and
evaluation purposes. One can do this for basic
how to best handle them.
research goals such as to understand

analysis of what happened easier.
3.2.1. Responsibility and Accountability
3.3. Present Emergency Wiki Sites
Another great difference in an HRO is how
problems or mistakes are handled. In political Many wiki groups either state explicitly on
organizations, it’s been historically observed that their site or are inherently a community of
there is a need to lay blame elsewhere. It can be practice. This is also a developing aspect to
against a single person known as ‘The Fall Guy’ open source software. You will find many sites
or where organizations play the blame game as using the term ‘Community’ now. For example,
in the case of the disastrous response efforts to you have the phpBB Community which consists
New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. The of developers who work towards a common goal
mayor blamed the governor and the governor using the open source methodology. So, when
blamed the president and the president blamed combining a project that is based on open source
FEMA and FEMA blamed the president and so software with a specific type of wiki, the idea of
on and so forth. Eventually, after a public collaboration is further extended into the output,
outcry, an investigation was conducted and the information.
truth could no longer be denied by the The Ontolog wiki explicitly states that they
government. This is not a method conducive for are a virtual community of practice. The Eden
fast turn around on problems and understanding. group presents work: EDEN Becomes
It’s more a defensive approach to redirect eXtension Pioneering Community of Practice
responsibility when something goes wrong. where they offer “all EDEN delegates and other
An HRO has an approach where one of its Extension faculty and staff from around the
main goals is to have a very high desire to country -- and even other people with expertise
recover from something unexpected. In order to in these topics -- will be invited to help create
accomplish this, they view mistakes as a great information on the Communities of Practice
opportunity to explore a situation and events that Wiki* Web site.”
occurred. Nobody is fired and admonished but , There are great advantages that would
rather, all are appreciated for examining benefit potential players from numerous
weaknesses of the system. The goal is to make perspectives allowing for the collaboration and
sure to make the most of that failure and dissemination of information like never before.
maximize the learning potential from the A new method for finding information is behind
experience. After all, you learn from your the potential for dealing with information
mistakes be they within your power or a result overload by utilizing a search centered strategy
of your environment, a weakness in the system using key words to find the information versus a
not identified prior or anything that can be hierarchical approach. There is a tremendous
classified as unexpected. Therefore, the end potential for wiki's in Emergency Management.
result will be that you have a more powerful However, they cannot ultimately exist as
machine that you accept is not perfect, but that is independent operations. Since disasters do not
now more resistant to unexpected events and is know about local, state, and federal boundaries
more robust. In a nutshell, what doesn’t kill an wikis in this area have to support communities of
HRO only makes it stronger. A COP practice that can handle disasters of any size.
encompassing an HRO philosophy would strictly Therefore these wikis have to become
adhere to these expectations. The beauty of this Knowledge Exchange Centers that form a
combination is that then there is a group of network of application domains that can allow
willing knowledgeable, assertive and intelligent those that need information, knowledge, or
which has an end result of a better group of volunteers with particular skills can be sought
people with which to interact with and learn from a network of such centers in a manner that
from. This combination together of an does not require the users to separately
emergency domain related group that interacts understand each independent node in the
regularly striving for understanding and network.
perfection is how a wiki can be best leveraged.
The fact that all communication is archived on a
wiki makes reflection and action based upon an

Table 2.0 Present Emergency Wikis of June 2007
Site Name Link and Description
http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage
COLAB: An Open Collaborative Work Environment (CWE) to Support Networking
Among Communities of Practice (http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate). Provides
\"incubator\" space for open and member-only communities seeking to better
CoLab Wiki
understand web-based community collaboration approaches. At least one online COP
(SICoP) works for \"semantic interoperability\" in the government sector, including
disaster preparedness information and communication systems.
http://wiki.oasis-open.org/emergency/
This wiki is provided by the OASIS standards consortium as a collaborative tool for
members of the OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee, who are
Emergency
permitted to post to these pages. OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of
Wiki
Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that
drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards.
http://esf.uvm.edu/emwiki/index.php/Main_Page
ESF
Building safety guidelines, including Indoor Air Quality Response Protocols and a
Emergency
Lab Spill Risk Assessment Tool
Wiki
http://www.fluwikie.com/
The purpose of the Flu Wiki is to help local communities prepare for and perhaps
FluWiki
cope with a possible influenza pandemic.
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage
ONTOLOG (a.k.a. \"Ontolog Forum\") is an open, international, virtual community of
practice devoted to advancing the field of ontology, ontological engineering and
Ontolog
semantic technology, and advocating their adoption into mainstream applications and
Wiki
international standards. Some 10 members of this wiki held a meeting in the
Netherlands in May 2007, to connect their efforts on ontologies for emergency
management (one of the authors participated in the meeting).
http://quakehelp.asiaquake.org/qh/index.php/Main_Page
QuakeHelp Wiki is a project of the World Wide Help Group.SM The wiki was begun
Quake Help
just before Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast of the United States to help people
Wiki
cope with the hurricane and its aftermath.
In countries like New Zealand, not only do to citizen volunteers. This has created a much
citizens volunteer their talents in disasters, but larger manpower base to respond to emergencies
companies and businesses volunteer useful than has been available in the past for many
equipment such as construction equipment, localities. However, this also requires web based
boats, communications equipment, medical systems for coordination of the activities of this
supplies, etc. This requires systems which will manpower and some continuous form of
allow those that want to volunteer such resources information exchange to make sure current plans
to be able to enter and update the material on are updated and understood by all. What can
their talents and the resources they command, result is an ability to have a network of resources
that can be shared in a disaster situation [20]. and people that can respond to any disaster and
One of the more recent successful programs provide coverage through the geographical
for local areas has been the CERT programs spread of the disaster, and not be confined to
which bring training in Emergency Management artificial political boundaries in terms of overall

response and cooperation. conference, the announcement of emergenciWiki
was made to a select group who worked
collaboratively on other emergency response
4. The emergenciWiki.org Research
affiliated areas. This group was comprised
Project
primarily of professionals within the United
States.
EmergenciWiki uses MediaWiki, which was
The purpose of this wiki is for a
chosen due to the large dispersed group of
collaborative building effort through any
experts who will be using it. The learning curve
knowledgeable individual or group affiliate who
for using a wiki can be challenging. However,
is concerned with natural or man made disasters,
by using a platform many people are already
be they in the academic and/or industry. It is
familiar with, through their use of Wikipedia, the
believed that this group is, by nature, comprised
learning curve can be made less steep.
of individuals and distributed teams creating a
EmergencyWiki is at the time of writing, open
virtual community of practice. Holding to this
and unstructured. Some initial categories are
belief, it is hoped that knowledge will be built
given and basic information for emergencies is
from any expert within a field, by any
provided to seed the wiki. Membership is an
knowledgeable individual who can contribute to
option and users can register in the community
the content and hence, working together, we all
portal, but initially registering isn’t required.
benefit through a global collaborative
At the same time, some active
intelligence. In this spirit, we will allow the wiki
emergenciWiki members have detailed visions of
to evolve and reflect best the knowledge of the
what kind of a community and what functions
community. The more this is developed, the
the wiki may be supporting in a year or two. But
more powerful of a tool it will be.
codifying these expectations into, for example,
The mission of this effort is to be the
emergenciWiki's layout, would not be wise. A
“Wikipedia of Emergencies”! We hope that
mature look and feel for an immature virtual
information produced in emergenciWiki will
community could create false expectations and
become beneficial to the Community of Practice
disappointments in new members and other
around emergency preparation and response.
interested people.
FOSS wikis are cheap, easy and quick to
There are many open issues surrounding this
set-up and can be outsourced for a minimal fee.
effort:
The start-up costs for emergenciWiki were very
modest, under 100 dollars a year. This type of
What does the future hold for such a system
service is common and lessens the aggravating
as an emergenciWiki?
factors that are so time consuming when initially
Should restraints be used? Is this the right
setting up a system. Compatibility issues, version
wiki software?
correctness and time it takes for the first time
Does a wiki define it’s own purpose or is it
you set something up are issues that can be
simply evolving?
easily overcome by outsourceing. For example,
outsourcing avoids the delays incurred when
5. Summary and Conclusions
going through administrators, waiting for
permissions to be set up, going through virtual
A wiki represents a moment in time where
private networks and avoiding security hazards,
viewpoints are held in such a manner as to mirror
What should take 15 minutes can take weeks and
a group’s norms, beliefs or knowledge. Wikis
be frustrating to all involved when attempting to
appear to have different features supported
set up a wiki. So, we paid a group $35 to set up
which are tailored to the user group by the use of
MediaWiki, which took only 15 minutes. The
the wiki. Some use the wiki as a way to
cost of purchasing the domain was minimal as
distribute information, some use wikis
well.
interactively, building a strong reservoir of
knowledge in a specific area such as FluWiki.
4.1. The Launching of emergenciWiki.org
Other wikis are used for group suppor,t
providing the necessary functionality to support
In our first 24 hour period, we had over 100
multiple roles.
hits. The wiki had been announced in a paper
You don’t have to leave the United States to
presented to a conference on emergency
cross cultures; sometimes it’s simply a matter of
management (ISCRAM.org). Prior to that
crossing the street. In New York City,

[6] European Commission Communications
Chinatown and Little Italy are back to back. And
Committee \"Working Document: Cell Broadcasting –
as we all remember from the Twin Towers
standardization needs for 4G mobile networks\",
terrorist attacks, numerous nationalities can
Brussels, BE,EU, 7th June 2006. Open access:
reside within the same building or company. The
http://forum.europa.eu.int/Public/irc/infso/cocom1/libr
globalization of ideas and intelligence can be ary?l=/public_documents_2006/cocom06-
combined such that we collect and disseminate 22_broadcastpdf/_EN_1.0_&a=d, referenced 24-May-
our strengths and start working together as a 2007.
disaster struck environment utilizing outside
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