In an extreme event or major disaster, very often there are both alternative actions that might be considered and far more requests for actions than can be executed immediately. The relative desirability of each option for action could be a collaborative expression of a significant number of emergency managers and experts trying to manage the most desirable alternatives at any given time, in real time. Delphi characteristics can satisfy these needs given that anyone can vote or change their vote on any two options, and voting and scaling are used to promote a group understanding. Further utilized with Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment, a group decision or the range of acceptability a group is willing to consent to, can be calculated and utilized as a means of producing the best decision. A ubiquitous system for expeditious real-time decision making by large virtual teams in emergency
response environments is described.
This document provides a report on a workshop aimed at understanding the information needs of field-based decision makers during sudden onset disasters. The workshop brought together experienced humanitarian responders who participated in exercises to articulate the types of decisions they face in the first few weeks of an emergency and the key information needed to inform those decisions. The results identified many common decision areas and information priorities across different organizational functions. The report concludes there is a need for further research on humanitarian decision making to help ensure data collection and analysis is guided by decision makers' actual information requirements.
This research compares online and in-person collaboration and decision-making among crisis management stakeholders in the UK and Japan. It investigates communication characteristics and how information and communication technologies (ICT) can support collaboration and multi-criteria decision making. The study uses interviews and workshops to examine stakeholder processes in hypothetical disaster scenarios and compares online discussion using electronic meeting systems and virtual worlds to traditional face-to-face methods. The goals are to understand the role of ICT in preparation and response, evaluate cultural differences, and identify design implications for online collaboration tools and decision support in crises.
Open Humanitarian Initiative - August 2012 updateGisli Olafsson
The Open Humanitarian Initiative aims to improve information sharing and management capacity during disaster response through two key streams: 1) Developing technology solutions like data standards, a sharing platform, and visualization tools. 2) Building capacity through training, digital volunteers, and research innovation. This unique initiative focuses on collaboration, leveraging existing investments, utilizing a broad community including the private sector and governments, and having a flexible funding and governance model. Bringing together such a diverse set of partners is seen as critical to the initiative's success.
We documented and illustrated the use of a data collection and analysis suite, SenseMaker, that was designed to collect and work with narrative fragments. The approach presented adds a new and inherently mixed tool to the mixed methods toolbox. Despite its novelty and potential utility, little has been written in the academic literature on the application of SenseMaker to complex problems. To the best of our knowledge, the approach has not been used in relation to climate change or climate change adaptation and has not been presented in the mixed methods literature. We sought to contribute to filling this gap through describing the approach used to generate the data that underpin the articles in this special feature. Our purpose was to illustrate some of the potential and most notable challenges of using the SenseMaker data collection and analysis process in a complex domain through examining adaptation to climate change. Our overview was not exhaustive but rather sought to highlight capabilities and challenges through examining experiences of adaptation from a stages of change perspective. SenseMaker provides a remarkably powerful tool for the capture of micronarratives of complex phenomena such as climate change. The capacity to have respondents interpret, i.e., make sense of, their own narratives is an important innovation that provides one plausible solution to the problem of analysts coding narratives.
Disaster and crisis management is a global problem. Scenarios range from short-term localized events to those with widespread impact persisting for years or decades. From personal experience and research in the topic area, there is clearly a need for a technology “platform” that can integrate cross-disciplinary agencies, civilians, contractors, and any other conceivable stakeholder. These stakeholders (including the environment and the public) will benefit immensely from integration and standardization in a problem-solving environment, especially in light of the value of human life. This approach should lead to enhanced preservation of life and safety, reduced environmental impact, and overall improvement in disaster response and mitigation – irrespective of the disaster type or scale.
1. The document proposes using the Advanced Syntegration tool to coordinate large-scale disaster response in as little as 2.5-3.5 days after an event.
2. The Advanced Syntegration is presented as a revolutionary innovation that harnesses the collective intelligence of up to 40 key stakeholders to efficiently solve complex problems.
3. A case study of a catastrophic hurricane hitting Hawaii with no evacuation option finds the current response system overwhelmed; the author argues the Advanced Syntegration could better coordinate the many responding organizations under extreme time pressure and complexity.
This document provides a report on a workshop aimed at understanding the information needs of field-based decision makers during sudden onset disasters. The workshop brought together experienced humanitarian responders who participated in exercises to articulate the types of decisions they face in the first few weeks of an emergency and the key information needed to inform those decisions. The results identified many common decision areas and information priorities across different organizational functions. The report concludes there is a need for further research on humanitarian decision making to help ensure data collection and analysis is guided by decision makers' actual information requirements.
This research compares online and in-person collaboration and decision-making among crisis management stakeholders in the UK and Japan. It investigates communication characteristics and how information and communication technologies (ICT) can support collaboration and multi-criteria decision making. The study uses interviews and workshops to examine stakeholder processes in hypothetical disaster scenarios and compares online discussion using electronic meeting systems and virtual worlds to traditional face-to-face methods. The goals are to understand the role of ICT in preparation and response, evaluate cultural differences, and identify design implications for online collaboration tools and decision support in crises.
Open Humanitarian Initiative - August 2012 updateGisli Olafsson
The Open Humanitarian Initiative aims to improve information sharing and management capacity during disaster response through two key streams: 1) Developing technology solutions like data standards, a sharing platform, and visualization tools. 2) Building capacity through training, digital volunteers, and research innovation. This unique initiative focuses on collaboration, leveraging existing investments, utilizing a broad community including the private sector and governments, and having a flexible funding and governance model. Bringing together such a diverse set of partners is seen as critical to the initiative's success.
We documented and illustrated the use of a data collection and analysis suite, SenseMaker, that was designed to collect and work with narrative fragments. The approach presented adds a new and inherently mixed tool to the mixed methods toolbox. Despite its novelty and potential utility, little has been written in the academic literature on the application of SenseMaker to complex problems. To the best of our knowledge, the approach has not been used in relation to climate change or climate change adaptation and has not been presented in the mixed methods literature. We sought to contribute to filling this gap through describing the approach used to generate the data that underpin the articles in this special feature. Our purpose was to illustrate some of the potential and most notable challenges of using the SenseMaker data collection and analysis process in a complex domain through examining adaptation to climate change. Our overview was not exhaustive but rather sought to highlight capabilities and challenges through examining experiences of adaptation from a stages of change perspective. SenseMaker provides a remarkably powerful tool for the capture of micronarratives of complex phenomena such as climate change. The capacity to have respondents interpret, i.e., make sense of, their own narratives is an important innovation that provides one plausible solution to the problem of analysts coding narratives.
Disaster and crisis management is a global problem. Scenarios range from short-term localized events to those with widespread impact persisting for years or decades. From personal experience and research in the topic area, there is clearly a need for a technology “platform” that can integrate cross-disciplinary agencies, civilians, contractors, and any other conceivable stakeholder. These stakeholders (including the environment and the public) will benefit immensely from integration and standardization in a problem-solving environment, especially in light of the value of human life. This approach should lead to enhanced preservation of life and safety, reduced environmental impact, and overall improvement in disaster response and mitigation – irrespective of the disaster type or scale.
1. The document proposes using the Advanced Syntegration tool to coordinate large-scale disaster response in as little as 2.5-3.5 days after an event.
2. The Advanced Syntegration is presented as a revolutionary innovation that harnesses the collective intelligence of up to 40 key stakeholders to efficiently solve complex problems.
3. A case study of a catastrophic hurricane hitting Hawaii with no evacuation option finds the current response system overwhelmed; the author argues the Advanced Syntegration could better coordinate the many responding organizations under extreme time pressure and complexity.
The document is a presentation that includes images from Flickr with captions describing each image and its source. It contains 9 images with captions about meeting smiles, Google, office choices, straight roads, dark roads, clear roads, Wall Street, and payment amounts. Each image is sourced from Flickr with its URL listed.
How to Sell Your Great American Business StoryDaybreak Lit
This document provides five tips for small businesses to sell their story using social media:
1. Know your story and share it across social media platforms in a way that adds value and context.
2. Share your story on multiple platforms by sprinkling bits across Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and more. Connect storytelling to sales goals and metrics.
3. Anticipate potential problems like business objectives, social media policies, copyright issues, and crisis management to address in stories.
4. Build an engaged community through surveys, questions, customer service, and interactions on social media.
Climbing upper berths on trains in India can be difficult due to a lack of handholds. A proposed concept adds a retractable ladder to each set of berths to make accessing the top and middle berths easier and safer. The ladder can be rotated out when in use, allowing travelers to climb up and sit securely on the berth while keeping one leg on the ladder for support. After positioning on the berth, the ladder can be closed again. Prototyping was done at home to demonstrate how travelers could use the retractable ladder to more easily reach the upper berths.
Este documento proporciona instrucciones sobre diferentes técnicas auxiliares de estudio como la toma de apuntes, el subrayado y la elaboración de resúmenes. Explica las reglas y ventajas de la toma de apuntes, los tipos y beneficios del subrayado, y los pasos para crear un resumen efectivo. El objetivo es enseñar a los estudiantes habilidades para organizar la información de manera efectiva y retener lo más importante.
Building a social media function ellefritz - social techBrian Ellefritz
Building a social media function at your company can be divided into stages, each with it's own characteristics, challenges and opportunities. Presented at the MediaPost SocialTech 2010 conference in San Jose by Brian Ellefritz of SAP.
This document discusses factors that influence crisis managers and their decision making during extreme events. It notes that extreme events present challenges that are different than smaller emergencies due to issues like uncertainty, complexity, and scale. Crisis managers face problems like stress, time pressure, information overload, and making decisions without complete information. They must make difficult life-or-death decisions and balance urgency with taking time to consider options. Extreme events can be considered "wicked problems" due to ambiguous and changing factors. The document examines how crisis managers navigate uncertainty and process large amounts of information to make critical judgments during disasters.
An Online Social Network for Emergency ManagementConnie White
This document proposes investigating whether an online social network could help facilitate collaboration across different emergency management organizations. It discusses how social networking sites are becoming more popular tools for mass collaboration. The researchers conducted a survey of emergency management students to get preliminary feedback on using social networks for emergency coordination. The results showed strong agreement that social networks could effectively support information sharing and communication during emergencies. The researchers plan to further engage emergency professionals to understand their needs and how a social network could best serve the emergency domain.
The Fujita Scale measures tornado strength, ranging from F0 for light damage to F5 for incredible damage. F0 causes light damage, F1 moderate damage, F2 incrouteable damage, F3 severe damage, F4 devastating damage, and F5 incredible damage.
This document discusses the importance of backing up data and provides tips for doing so. It notes that electronic data is vulnerable to failures and corruption, so backing up protects the time, effort and money invested in that data. The document recommends scheduling regular backups and choosing a storage medium, such as an external hard drive or cloud storage. It also stresses the importance of testing restores and provides a list of common items that should be included in backups.
Andorra is a small country located between France and Spain in the Pyrenees Mountains. It has excellent ski resorts with modern facilities and equipment rentals that make it a popular winter destination for visitors seeking snow sports. The country sees heavy snowfall each winter ensuring great conditions on over 100 miles of trails catering to all ability levels.
The story is a young handsome young male have a great time in the party, and ever more he have a little chat with a beautiful lady, he fell in love with this lady, and they decided to go to a private to have their romantic time. They went into a room in which equipped a smoke detector. When they went inside the room, the young man still held his cigarette. The cigarette activated the smoke detector and sprinkle. At the end, they both got wet by the sprinkle. The lady was very angry and she rushed out the door.
This is a short electronic dance music track produced by Kweezzz. The song has an upbeat tempo with heavy bass synths and percussion. Layered synth melodies carry the song which builds energy throughout and ends with a climactic drop.
United We Respond: One Community, One VoiceConnie White
When emergency situations cross borders, or when newly formed groups need to work together, decision making can suffer from threat rigidity and pertinent information can be bypassed. We describe a Dynamic Delphi system under development that can create and sustain a group “voice” for an emergency response Community of Practice (CoP). We further describe its intended use for a CoP consisting of local, state and federal government responders, civilian emergency response teams (CERT), and volunteers. Community members can brainstorm, explore ideas, debate and vote iteratively to best reflect the group's opinion at any moment in time. Ongoing studies demonstrate that an online system implementing Dynamic Delphi characteristics along with Thurstone's Law of Comparative Judgment will prove conducive for building a repertoire of ideas, rules, policies or any other aspect of the community's 'voice', in such a way that the individual voices are juxtaposed in harmony to create a single song.
The document is a presentation that includes images from Flickr with captions describing each image and its source. It contains 9 images with captions about meeting smiles, Google, office choices, straight roads, dark roads, clear roads, Wall Street, and payment amounts. Each image is sourced from Flickr with its URL listed.
How to Sell Your Great American Business StoryDaybreak Lit
This document provides five tips for small businesses to sell their story using social media:
1. Know your story and share it across social media platforms in a way that adds value and context.
2. Share your story on multiple platforms by sprinkling bits across Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and more. Connect storytelling to sales goals and metrics.
3. Anticipate potential problems like business objectives, social media policies, copyright issues, and crisis management to address in stories.
4. Build an engaged community through surveys, questions, customer service, and interactions on social media.
Climbing upper berths on trains in India can be difficult due to a lack of handholds. A proposed concept adds a retractable ladder to each set of berths to make accessing the top and middle berths easier and safer. The ladder can be rotated out when in use, allowing travelers to climb up and sit securely on the berth while keeping one leg on the ladder for support. After positioning on the berth, the ladder can be closed again. Prototyping was done at home to demonstrate how travelers could use the retractable ladder to more easily reach the upper berths.
Este documento proporciona instrucciones sobre diferentes técnicas auxiliares de estudio como la toma de apuntes, el subrayado y la elaboración de resúmenes. Explica las reglas y ventajas de la toma de apuntes, los tipos y beneficios del subrayado, y los pasos para crear un resumen efectivo. El objetivo es enseñar a los estudiantes habilidades para organizar la información de manera efectiva y retener lo más importante.
Building a social media function ellefritz - social techBrian Ellefritz
Building a social media function at your company can be divided into stages, each with it's own characteristics, challenges and opportunities. Presented at the MediaPost SocialTech 2010 conference in San Jose by Brian Ellefritz of SAP.
This document discusses factors that influence crisis managers and their decision making during extreme events. It notes that extreme events present challenges that are different than smaller emergencies due to issues like uncertainty, complexity, and scale. Crisis managers face problems like stress, time pressure, information overload, and making decisions without complete information. They must make difficult life-or-death decisions and balance urgency with taking time to consider options. Extreme events can be considered "wicked problems" due to ambiguous and changing factors. The document examines how crisis managers navigate uncertainty and process large amounts of information to make critical judgments during disasters.
An Online Social Network for Emergency ManagementConnie White
This document proposes investigating whether an online social network could help facilitate collaboration across different emergency management organizations. It discusses how social networking sites are becoming more popular tools for mass collaboration. The researchers conducted a survey of emergency management students to get preliminary feedback on using social networks for emergency coordination. The results showed strong agreement that social networks could effectively support information sharing and communication during emergencies. The researchers plan to further engage emergency professionals to understand their needs and how a social network could best serve the emergency domain.
The Fujita Scale measures tornado strength, ranging from F0 for light damage to F5 for incredible damage. F0 causes light damage, F1 moderate damage, F2 incrouteable damage, F3 severe damage, F4 devastating damage, and F5 incredible damage.
This document discusses the importance of backing up data and provides tips for doing so. It notes that electronic data is vulnerable to failures and corruption, so backing up protects the time, effort and money invested in that data. The document recommends scheduling regular backups and choosing a storage medium, such as an external hard drive or cloud storage. It also stresses the importance of testing restores and provides a list of common items that should be included in backups.
Andorra is a small country located between France and Spain in the Pyrenees Mountains. It has excellent ski resorts with modern facilities and equipment rentals that make it a popular winter destination for visitors seeking snow sports. The country sees heavy snowfall each winter ensuring great conditions on over 100 miles of trails catering to all ability levels.
The story is a young handsome young male have a great time in the party, and ever more he have a little chat with a beautiful lady, he fell in love with this lady, and they decided to go to a private to have their romantic time. They went into a room in which equipped a smoke detector. When they went inside the room, the young man still held his cigarette. The cigarette activated the smoke detector and sprinkle. At the end, they both got wet by the sprinkle. The lady was very angry and she rushed out the door.
This is a short electronic dance music track produced by Kweezzz. The song has an upbeat tempo with heavy bass synths and percussion. Layered synth melodies carry the song which builds energy throughout and ends with a climactic drop.
United We Respond: One Community, One VoiceConnie White
When emergency situations cross borders, or when newly formed groups need to work together, decision making can suffer from threat rigidity and pertinent information can be bypassed. We describe a Dynamic Delphi system under development that can create and sustain a group “voice” for an emergency response Community of Practice (CoP). We further describe its intended use for a CoP consisting of local, state and federal government responders, civilian emergency response teams (CERT), and volunteers. Community members can brainstorm, explore ideas, debate and vote iteratively to best reflect the group's opinion at any moment in time. Ongoing studies demonstrate that an online system implementing Dynamic Delphi characteristics along with Thurstone's Law of Comparative Judgment will prove conducive for building a repertoire of ideas, rules, policies or any other aspect of the community's 'voice', in such a way that the individual voices are juxtaposed in harmony to create a single song.
Design of Emergency Response Management Information Systemsglobal
DERMIS is a proposed dynamic emergency response management information system that aims to address challenges in coordinating emergency response efforts. It would utilize a transaction system integrated with a structured group communication system. Users could create and modify event templates and roles at any time to evolve the system based on needs. DERMIS could be used for all phases of emergency response as well as for training, evaluation, and recovery efforts across a variety of emergency types and organizations. The goal is a flexible system that encourages collaboration and adapts to changing situations.
Evaluating Platforms for Community Sensemaking: Using the Case of the Kenyan ...COMRADES project
This document describes a study that evaluated how platforms can support community sensemaking during disruptive events. The researchers conducted a scenario-based evaluation using data from Kenya's 2017 elections. Twelve students participated in the evaluation. They were given the task of mapping reports of voting incidents and irregularities from Kenya's Uchaguzi platform to assess the validity of the elections and support security forces. The goal was to examine how such a platform could aid non-mandated responders' situational understanding. Data was collected on the participants' sensemaking process to identify requirements for resilience platforms and inform future research.
A Real Time Online Delphi Decision System, V 2.0: Crisis Management Support d...Connie White
The Delphi Decision Maker system has been designed to support the decision making needs of crisis managers, considering factors such as stress, time pressure, information overload, and uncertainty. It has been built as a module for the Sahana Disaster Management system, a free and open source system. The Design Science research paradigm was used in an iterative development process. Triangulation was employed in the evaluation, analyzing the system against the research questions using both qualitative and quantitative statistics as well as proof of concept. Modifications need to be made for real world use. A second version of the system is under development. Research findings and future research are outlined in this work in progress.
Defining a problem and understanding it syntactically as well as semantically enhances the decision process because the written agenda and solutions are understood on a token level. Consensus in groups can be challenging in present web based environments given the dynamics of types of interactions and needs. Larger virtual communities are beginning to use wiki based decision support systems for time critical interactions where the quality of the information is high and a near real time feedback system is necessary. Understanding the meaning of the problem and group consensus can be improved exploiting a voting enhanced wiki structure implemented into select parts of the decision making process. A decision support model integrating a wiki structure and a social decision support system (voting) is presented. Findings from a pilot study describe differences of idea generation between groups. Other issues are identified requiring further research.
Defining a problem and understanding it syntactically as well as semantically enhances the decision process because the written agenda and solutions are understood on a token level. Consensus in groups can be challenging in present web based environments given the dynamics of types of interactions and needs. Larger virtual communities are beginning to use wiki based decision support systems for time critical interactions where the quality of the information is high and a near real time feedback system is necessary. Understanding the meaning of the problem and group consensus can be improved exploiting a voting enhanced wiki structure implemented into select parts of the decision making process. A decision support model integrating a wiki structure and a social decision support system (voting) is presented. Findings from a pilot study describe differences of idea generation between groups. Other issues are identified requiring further research.
Diffusion of Innovations Slides Ch.1 & 2David Onoue
The document summarizes key concepts from Everett Rogers' book Diffusion of Innovations. It discusses four main elements of diffusion: the innovation, communication channels, time, and the social system. It describes how innovations diffuse through a social system via communication channels over time. Individuals make innovation decisions through a process from awareness to adoption or rejection. Innovativeness varies among members of a social system in adopting innovations.
This document summarizes a PhD research project exploring how online social media is used to support local governance. It describes a case study of a small community that uses online discussion forums to discuss local issues. Analysis identified five patterns of "governance conversation" including sharing information, providing feedback, coordinating responses, informally mediating issues, and engaging in discussion of complex problems. While no binding decisions were made online, the discussions supported governance action. The research examines how online tools can both facilitate instrumental problem-solving and support expressive deliberation that accommodates pluralism in local governance.
Finding The Voice of A Virtual Community of PracticeConnie White
Critical components for a successful Community of Practice (CoP) are that: 1) the community members have a space where their voice can be heard and that, (2) the proper technology is given to them to aid in this effort. We describe a Dynamic Delphi system under development which interprets the group’s voice in the creation of information during the initial start up phases when cultivating a CoP. Community members’ alternatives are explored, justified and debated over periods of time, and best reflect the group’s opinion at any moment in time where collective intelligence will be created from the interactions amongst group members. The system could handle a wide variety of types of decisions reflecting the diversity of goals given a CoP including emergency response actions, prediction markets, lobbying efforts, any sort of problem solving, making investment suggestions, etc. Pilot studies indicate that the group creates a greater number of better ideas. Ongoing studies are described, including applications to emergency management planning and response. They demonstrate that implementing a Dynamic Delphi system will prove conducive for building the initial repertoire of ideas, rules, policies or any other aspect of the community’s ‘voice’ that should be heard, in such a way that the individual voices are juxtaposed in harmony to create a single song.
Foundations of Delphi for Foresight and Group CommunicationTina Comes
The document summarizes the Delphi method, which structures group communication around the nature of an application and group. Key points:
- Delphi originally used paper rounds over months but now enables online asynchronous collaboration.
- It aims to explore problems, gather ideas, understand viewpoints, and encourage discussion/consensus without direct debate.
- Voting is used to expose differences and focus discussion, not make decisions. Participants can change views based on others' contributions.
- When structured properly online, Delphi can lead to more ideas/solutions than unstructured discussion alone, demonstrating its ability to harness collective intelligence.
This is a talk I gave at the ePart conference 2010.
The talk is actually available on Youtube.
Abstract: We present an alternative form of decision making designed using a Human Based Genetic Algorithms. The algorithm permits the participants to tackle open questions, by letting all of them propose answers and evaluate each others answers. A successful example is described and some theoretical results are presented showing how the system scales up.
The system I am presenting is available at: http://vilfredo.org
My homepage is at: http://pietrosperoni.it
1) Default technologies in behavior analysis refer to interventions that rely on aversive contingencies, which are adopted when positive reinforcement fails to produce the desired outcome.
2) While behavior analysts should continue developing aversive technologies, they should not advocate for their adoption, as this is unlikely to be effective and could damage the field of applied behavior analysis.
3) Aversive contingencies are a "third-order default technology" that is only considered after natural contingencies and positive reinforcement fail. Behavior analysts' role is to minimize the need for aversive contingencies by improving positive reinforcement strategies.
General knowledge about emergency management based on pervasive computingAssignment Studio
1) The document discusses the need for an enhanced emergency management system to handle increasing threats from disasters due to population growth, climate change, and other factors. It emphasizes the importance of coordination between different rescue teams and technologies to improve response efforts.
2) Current emergency systems often lack coordination between government and private rescue groups, resulting in delays to victim aid. The use of distributed computing technologies and process management systems can help rescue leaders monitor the situation and direct rescue efforts in a more effective manner.
3) An effective emergency management system requires early warning, timely response, accurate assessment of needs, organized rescue workers, and good coordination between all groups. New technologies have potential to accelerate response but still require fast, reliable data and
The document discusses overcoming cognitive biases in group decision making. It notes that issues like climate change require considering causes and effects that are remote in time and space. However, human decision making is prone to biases like availability bias and ambiguity effect that hinder effective long term planning. These biases can result in "disjointed incrementalism" and failure to address major threats. The document proposes using scenario planning and games/web-based approaches to encourage participation to help address biases in decision making.
Information overload for communities of practiceMurray Turoff
A study of emergency management professionals with emphasis on medical and public health done for NLM. These are slides of a paper presented at Web2008 during ICIS 2008 and you can request a copy of the paper from me directly as well as other work in this area. Check my website for the full NLM report
The document discusses mobile collaboration tools for disaster response. It introduces four free and open-source tools created to improve collaboration in crisis situations by allowing diverse organizations to self-organize, share information freely across boundaries, and maintain a common operating picture. The tools aim to address challenges like unreliable networks, busy users, and a lack of information sharing. They include Mesh4X, a data synchronization platform, and GeoChat, an emergent awareness group chat tool on a map. The document calls for broad adoption of such tools to effectively support collaboration during disasters.
Media, information and the promise of new technologies in Knowledge Transfer ...maudelfin
The document discusses knowledge transfer and exchange in the context of global health research. It explores how new technologies and networked societies are challenging traditional models of knowledge generation and dissemination. It also examines examples of new configurations for knowledge sharing, such as open data initiatives, crisis mapping, and open access protocols that utilize distributed networks instead of hierarchies. Finally, it calls for future research on knowledge transfer and exchange to take a more critical approach and consider how power structures and institutional contexts are impacted.
Similar to A Dynamic Delphi Process Utilizing a Modified Thurstone Scaling Method: Collaborative Judgement in Emergency Response (20)
Social Media, Crisis Communication, Emergency Mgmt & Drone Technology in Heal...Connie White
A presentation for Region 2 North Healthcare Coalition - 2017 Annual Conference on using Social Media, Crisis Communication, Emergency Mgmt & Drone Technology in Healthcare
Technological Advances Leveraging Use of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV...Connie White
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones, historically have been used primarily by the military due to availability, costs, size, usability and other factors. Advances in technology in recent years have remedied this situation. The main objective of this paper is to identify complementary emerging technologies to provide a state-of-the-art combination that is easy for emergency managers to obtain and use. This will offer duplicate functions once found to be cost prohibitive for emergency managers. We identify ways that when combined together can be further integrated into the various aspects of emergency management, along with identifying considerations that can be made to fulfill emergency management requirements. Specific technologies were identified, obtained and used to design a small UAV with cameras providing a variety of capabilities, including thermal imaging. Future research including alternative light sources is discussed. Research ideas that were generated during the exploratory work are presented in this paper.
Emergency Management Information System Support Rectifying 1st Responder Role...Connie White
Role abandonment once was considered unlikely by research scientists; however emergency management officials have experienced catastrophic events that counter prior assumptions. Event types such as deluges and pandemics surface as scenarios supporting one set of examples. We explore a different angle, focusing on individual practitioners including: (1) fire, (2) police and (3) emergency medical services. Surveys were taken by the various practitioner group types. Results suggested that there may be role abandonment issues, differing from one practitioner type to another, each with unique reasons given the event type. Although communities and individual emergency officials may never encounter such situations, it’s imperative that this event type be taken into account during the design and implementation of disaster management systems. Systems developed should be designed to support and modify needs given the size and magnitude of the event, be it an routine emergency, a larger disaster or a 'once in a lifetime' catastrophic event. In this case, we focus on human resources. It is for this reason that we believe that algorithms be identified, developed and implemented so that such information be accessible to emergency officials, should this rare situation arise.
Disaster Management Systems: Building Capacity for Developing Countries and ...Connie White
The document discusses building disaster management capacity in developing countries through information and communication technologies. It outlines how increasing internet penetration and use of mobile devices and social media can help take humanitarians and organizations online, disseminate information, and enable two-way communication. Various software tools, communities, and methods are presented for building individual, institutional, and systemic capacity at national and local levels. Aligning these capacity building efforts with targets in the Hyogo Framework for Action is also discussed.
Disaster Management Systems: Building Capacity for Developing Countries and ...Connie White
Some societies are more disaster prone than others due to their geographic location and the benefits provided by it. Man has co-existed in this sort of high risk/high return relationship with mother nature throughout history. Poorer societies tend to pay a higher price both in lives taken and damage – left with many secondary and equally devastating disasters that are sure to come. We know that for every $1 USD put into preventative measures, we save ~$7 that would have gone into post-disaster recovery and rebuilding efforts. There are many international agencies working to support a variety of needs in these grief stricken areas to help them build capacity and to help these societies better prepare for and respond to the disasters they will face. These efforts are guided by the Millennium Project Goals outlined in 2000. A lot has changed since then with respect to technology, mobile devices and humanitarianism. The objective of this paper is exploit how current efforts are creating capacity on the individual, organizational and 'enabling environment' levels. This paper explores the notion that a more concerted effort can be made at building Information and Communication Disaster Management Capacity in developing countries who are most susceptible due to proximity and to a lack of funds. A 'proof of concept' is provided
This document defines key concepts related to computer security including confidentiality, integrity, availability, accountability, and privacy. It provides definitions from NIST for computer security and outlines threats to each security concept. Examples of threats include malware, intruders, social engineering, insecure networks, and poorly administered systems that can compromise confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The document also discusses authentication and authorization methods, as well as the importance of system logs and audit trails for accountability.
This document discusses ongoing research into using social media to support emergency response, situational awareness, and information warfare. Specifically, it examines building situational awareness during emergencies by monitoring social media for real-time information about power outages, damaged infrastructure, communications issues, public health concerns, and response efforts. It also looks at challenges with using social media for decision support during crises and potential solutions involving local wireless networks, trust analysis of messages, information filtering, and dashboard tools.
Build a Better Mousetrap? Social Media Cultivating Emergency Management Com...Connie White
This document discusses how communities of practice (CoPs) in emergency management can leverage social media to share information and best practices. It notes that while some groups are functioning as CoPs without realizing it, creating effective online CoPs is challenging. Popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter allow information to be easily shared with relevant groups. The document argues that instead of creating separate internal sites, emergency management groups should look to utilize existing social media platforms to cultivate online CoPs, as these large platforms are easy to use and have large existing user bases.
Indiana Public Safety Academy - Social Media in K-12 SchoolsConnie White
This document discusses the use of social media for crisis communications and emergency management. It provides examples of how social media has changed communication through social networks like Facebook and sharing of photos and videos on sites like YouTube. The document argues that social media can be leveraged by schools, local governments, and other organizations to share information quickly during emergencies through platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and text messaging. It provides tips on integrating social media into an organization's communication strategy and monitoring for issues like bullying online.
Web 2.0 Technology Building Situational Awareness: Free and Open Source Too...Connie White
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A Dynamic Delphi Process Utilizing a Modified Thurstone Scaling Method: Collaborative Judgement in Emergency Response
1. A Dynamic Delphi Process Utilizing a Modified
Thurstone Scaling Method: Collaborative Judgement
in Emergency Response
Connie White and Murray Turoff Bartel Van de Walle
New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA Tilburg University
connie.m.white@gmail.com, turoff@njit.edu bartel@uvt.nl
ABSTRACT
In an extreme event or major disaster, very often there are both alternative actions that might be considered and far
more requests for actions than can be executed immediately. The relative desirability of each option for action could
be a collaborative expression of a significant number of emergency managers and experts trying to manage the most
desirable alternatives at any given time, in real time. Delphi characteristics can satisfy these needs given that
anyone can vote or change their vote on any two options, and voting and scaling are used to promote a group
understanding. Further utilized with Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment, a group decision or the range of
acceptability a group is willing to consent to, can be calculated and utilized as a means of producing the best
decision. A ubiquitous system for expeditious real-time decision making by large virtual teams in emergency
response environments is described.
Keywords
Delphi, emergency response system, Thurstone‘s Law of Comparative Judgment, ubiquitous, group support system,
paired comparisons, incomplete data, time series, judgment, collaboration, decision support.
INTRODUCTION
In an emergency environment, new requests are being made as the dynamics of a situation unfold. Re-
prioritization of requests in increasing importance reflects the needs of the situation. In addition, a list of options is
both increasing as new action requirements emerge, and decreasing as actions are being taken to satisfy these needs.
An emergency response requires that a large group of individuals work collaboratively on these types of tasks
together for the life of the emergency. Numerous challenges arise with decision support systems managing the
needs of not only emergency response, but of any dynamic environment where uncertainty and changes in decisions
over time need to be accurately reflected.
There will be situations in particular domains requiring expertise. This is where only subsets of the networked
individuals can make high confidence judgments about the relative preference for any two given options. For
example, out of the entire group collaborating during an emergency response, there may be only a handful of
bioterrorist specialist knowledgeable about anthrax. These individuals would handle problems, as would other
professionals, specific to their expertise creating a solution-centered structure. An advantage is that no particular
geographic region would need to have expertise in all possible emergency situations. Groups could be experts who
are situation specific. In the case of a hurricane, there could be a specialized hurricane emergency response group of
experts who are educated, experienced and fully qualified to deal with the problems of the situation. This is
different from our present state of affairs where, for example, if a hurricane destroys an area, the local governmental
officials are required to act as coordinators and experts in the field and react accordingly.
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History shows that this is not an effective assumption as local governmental officials cannot have expertise in all
potential problem areas. Actually, it’s unrealistic to believe that our public officials, who can change with every
new election, have the necessary training, background, experience and expertise in which to respond to such
calamity. It would be more advantageous for the local people, and for society, to have qualified people in these
positions not required to live amongst them, but available to assist in any location by use of electronic media. It is
likely this would be cost beneficial because disasters cost a lot of money and mistakes amplify the costs of recovery.
Our fundamental objective is to design a group collaborative system that allows a large group of professionals to
arrive at decisions that are better than any one single individual in the group could do. And to allow that group to
function as quickly as a single individual might function in a command and control system dealing with complex
problems occurring in a major emergency or disaster. This system will account for changing events, opinions,
judgments and decisions over the duration of the event.
The remainder of this paper is structured such that, in the Background we cover techniques chosen for our
methodology and show why we believe this to be the best approach. Delphi is described along with Thurstone’s
Law of Comparative Judgment. Modification is through the implementation of the dynamic features for time and
uncertainty. These are given by a partial least squares solution for the incomplete data set and a method for time
series detecting changes based on merit.
Based upon concepts from the Delphi Method (Linstone and Turoff, 1975; Wish and Carroll, 1975), we propose an
approach to dynamic voting (Turoff, et al., 2002) that turns Delphi into a continuous asynchronous process where
large groups of participants can engage in a group decision process. This process has been characterized in the past
as a Social Decision Support System (Turoff, Hiltz, Cho, 2002). Conclusive statements are made outlining the
broader impacts of the system. We end with further discussions considering high reliability organizations and
virtual organizations taking other viewpoints from what has been presented.
BACKGROUND
Scaling Technique and Voting
We have chosen the paired comparison approach to solicit judgments, not only because it reflects greater accuracy
in human judgment than traditional methods (Miranda, 2001, Torgerson, 1958), but also because it allows users to
focus on which items they wish to vote on or to focus on incremental changes. Our objective is to utilize voting and
scaling to promote the understanding of groups and teams to collectively comprehend the implications of their
subjective judgments of a list of items about which they are deliberating for the purpose of arriving iteratively at a
result exhibiting collective intelligence (Hiltz and Turoff, 1978). We are not treating scaling as a measure of a fixed
human judgment about a set of preferences but one that can dynamically change as a result of discussion and
feedback on a joint qualitative and quantitative structure. According to Thurstone (1927b), “ …qualitative
judgments of a rather intangible sort, loaded usually with personal opinion, bias, and even strong feeling, and
regarded generally as the direct antithesis of quantitative measurement, are nevertheless amenable to the type of
quantitative analysis which is associated historically with psychophysics.“
In our case we do not require that everyone participating votes on all of the items. We consider the appropriate
voting mechanism to be a relative comparison of two objects in the list because at any moment not every participant
may feel able to compare all the alternatives. We are addressing a situation where information pertinent to the
decision may occur at any time simultaneously with the problem solving process, and where people may change
their preferences at any moment due to either external inputs or internal discussion inputs. To allow this to be
accomplished, we have evolved a dynamic voting version of the Thrustone's Law of Comparative Judgment
(Thurstone, L.L., 1927a) which allows changes to the items in the list and to the voting, at any point in time.
Delphi
Studies have been conducted demonstrating that the Delphi approach is an effective system for group decision
support (Linstone and Turoff, 1975, Hiltz and Turoff, Li, et all, 2002). Delphi systems are used by large groups of
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3. White et al. Dynamic Delphi Processes in Emergency Response
people to solve complex problems (Linstone and Turoff, 1975). Computers and the Internet have enhanced the
original concept by allowing for computer mediated asynchronous communication that’s now accessible globally by
any group member. Add this flexibility to the user being able to participate in any phase of the decision process at
any time, and the Delphi concept is being revolutionized. There are many group decision support systems, but what
differentiates a Delphi system from any other is a unique set of characteristics (Linstone and Turoff, 1975, Turoff
and Hiltz, 1996, Li, et al, 2001):
Improve idea generation and resulting group problem solving
Self organize the contributed content
Anonymous user ability
Facilitate equal participation of all users
Reduce information overload
Facilitate collaborative problem solving
Utilizing voting to focus discussion on areas of disagreement and uncertainty
Facilitate understanding by enhanced visualization through the use of scaling methods
Facilitate comprehensive idea evaluation
Allow exchange of tacit knowledge among professionals
Allow changes in judgments at any time due to internal or external feedback
Allow simultaneous modification of alternatives being considered
Prior work in this area (Li, et al. 2003) focused on a system where the list was first derived and fixed before the
dynamic voting process was introduced which in essence resulted in a two- phased Delphi process that had a
dynamic voting process with respect to the fixed list and with a fixed number of voters.
METHODOLOGY
Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment
Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment takes two items and compares them based on some stimulus (Thurstone,
1927a). Paired comparison judgments give a more accurate reflection of a rank order when taking numerous items
into consideration (Miranda, 2001, Torgerson, 1958). This measurement of one item against another based on a
stimulus is defined as the discriminal process which is measured on the psychological continuum. Thus there is no
pre-existing scale in which to measure, but items are scaled one against the other. So, not only can additional
information be inferred from a group, but also, the range of values acceptable to a group, the ’heterogeneity’ can be
determined (Thurstone, 1928).
A frequency matrix is created based on decision input and from this a table of percentages is calculated. Unit
normal values replace the respective percentages. The end result is not only a rank order of the items, but a degree
of preference that can be measured amongst the items in the list. For example, in a given set X = {a, b, c, d} of rank
order (a > b> c> d), one can conclude that a is selected over b. In a rank order, these intervals are assumed equal
and no more information can be derived. On the other hand, Thurstone’s method gives degrees of difference. This
difference determines if further investigation is required on the voted upon course of action. For example, the
selection process of items to be chosen for a course of action, a and b, may be very close in judgment amongst the
group indicating an area of agreement or a need for further investigation. Also, a and b could be very far apart from
one another informing us that the majority selection voted for a and no further discussion should be prompted. The
results have meanings that are interpreted based on the particulars of a situation.
When emergency responders are faced with triage and the difficult task of prioritizing of who gets aid first, a normal
a rank order would be given indicating no difference between the degrees of adjacent choices. Conversely,
Thurstone’s method allows strengths to be calculated by determining the difference of the items based on their
location of the scale. Thurstone’s method takes in individual’s ordinal (rank) data and calculates a single group
interval scale. This gives more precise information reflecting the group’s opinion on which the decisions were
calculated from or indicates where the group stands on a particular issue. So, not only it would be possible to
determine that babies in ICU should be rescued and evacuated first, but when compared to healthy people stranded
at the Super Dome Coliseum, you would also know that there was a much greater desire for the babies to be
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4. Proceedings ISCRAM2007 (B. Van de Walle, P. Burghardt and C. Nieuwenhuis, eds.)
evacuated over the healthy stranded civilians. This tells you that more resources should be dedicated or given higher
priority for this in the event that other situations should arise where resources are requested.
Incomplete Data Sets and Uncertainty
Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment has primarily been used with complete data sets and in a fixed setting.
Only a small percentage of a large population may be participating on one aspect of an emergency situation, while
other small groups are working on other aspects of the same emergency situation. Professionals and experts are
divided into many subsets of groups that interact together as a whole with one common goal: managing the
emergency at hand effectively and efficiently. For example, only 10% of a population may form a group and vote
completely on a course of action, but others may selectively vote on items of interest to them. An individual’s
expertise may cross over many groups qualifying them for some groups, but may eliminate them from additional
groups. Professionals working within the zone of the emergency could lose communication leaving certain
decisions to be made without them. Other experts globally located in safe zones could be fully utilized under these
conditions. So, we are posed with the question of how to make the best inference given a small percentage of the
population input (vote) on a course of action.
The procedure to be utilized was first presented by Gulliksen (1956) where he observed, “The general usability of
paired comparisons, especially in fields such as sensation and value judgments, will be greatly enhanced by a precise
method for utilizing all of the available data when dealing with an incomplete matrix.” Decisions will be made
given enough of the population in an area has voted and considered the alternatives.
As a disaster approaches, it is actually a complex decision process to try and determine who should be evacuated
from what location and when. Additionally, the inputs to the decision should be from many different sources
dealing with all the above factors that need to be considered. Uncertainty of when the disaster will hit presents the
biggest problem. Estimates may change rapidly and frequently.
We can minimize this uncertainty by maximizing resources from many different professionals representing different
organizations of organizational units, as well as different expertise, dynamically contributing their judgments which
might change significantly as the hours go by. This is one example of a situation where it would seem to be
desirable to have a large number of emergency responders able to contribute and change their views in a dynamic
manner based upon their exchange of new information and reductions of uncertainty and ambiguity.
Dynamic Time Series Measurements
It is our intent to propose a Delphi system that is dynamic with respect to time series and that will reflect changes in
decisions due to influential information that is presented along this time frame of irregular intervals. This is a direct
reflection of the life of a decision process and human prerogatives. This system will have the ability (Fahrmeir,
1994) to produce the most recent and influential vote with time dependence. As time passes, judgment of items can
change abruptly in response to incoming information. Most models don’t allow a ‘sudden change of events’ to
affect the process in an abrupt manner. Glickman (1999) derived a stochastic variance paired comparison model to
overcome these challenges. In this model, comparisons of items in a list are made at time t. Time intervals are
assumed equal and take on integer values. The calculations are such that if, at a point in time, (i > j) then it is given
a value of 1, and if (j > i) then it gets a value of 0. These sudden shifts are detected as the variance of items grows
large. This shows that through the difference, a preference probability is a function of the merit.
Methods such as these can to be brought together for a synergistic effect that can be applied to a real time decision
making environment.
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5. White et al. Dynamic Delphi Processes in Emergency Response
An Example: Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina, 2005 serves as an example. The event is divided by the environmental changes that called for
dynamic decision making under the most volatile of conditions that occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana. These are
separated into the following 5 phases:
Phase I: Normal Preparations for Hurricanes - Friday, 72 hours until landfall: New Orleans is no stranger to
hurricanes. If not every year, every few years the area is confronted with an approaching hurricane. Normally, a
neighboring area gets hit or the hurricane is categorized at such a low level that Louisiana, once again, gets
away without suffering the much-feared consequences of ‘living below sea level’. There are normal
preparations that all Louisianans, tourist and public officials take prior to an oncoming hurricane. Usually, this
early on during an approaching hurricane, its direction can change any number of ways and the projected path is
narrowed down to about 1/3 the Gulf Coast region going anywhere from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Alabama to Florida.
Phase II: Pre-Katrina - Sunday, 24 hours until landfall. New Orleans knew it was going to get hit hard.
Katrina had elevated to a category 5 hurricane. Preparations for the worst went into effect.
Phase III: Post-Katrina - Landfall Monday. Late afternoon, the hurricane finally passed, New Orleans got hit
hard, but the city made it through the storm unlike their most unfortunate neighbors in Mississippi, who were
caught in the eye and devastated.
Phase IV: The Levees Break - Monday Evening. New Orleans residents and officials assessed the damage from
the storm. Unbeknownst to most, that evening, the levees broke and water was entering the city at an alarming
rate, flooding 80% of the city.
Phase V: After the Flood - Water Recedes. Pumps removed most of the water in the city and officials formally
assessed the damage. The city was virtually empty. There was no water, no electricity, and almost every
survivor had been evacuated from the area.
This one event made for an unpredictable and ever-changing environment challenging decision makers with
fluctuations calling for reprioritization constantly to meet the dynamic needs demanded of the current environment.
Resource allocation, evacuation, and triage are just a few examples where this method described in this paper could
have been utilized. On the local, state and national level during Hurricane Katrina, management of the situation was
hindered by the lack of a way for government officials and experts to collaborate with dynamic decisions on an on-
going real-time basis.
An example of use of the method presented in this paper using the problem of resource allocation and the
distribution of generators supplied to government-established areas maintaining or running operations in the event of
a power outage is presented. During phase I, the local officials would check and test their generators, and fill up on
supplies like gas and oil. The overall count could change something like:
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Inventory: Inventory: In Use On Lost
Non- Order Beyond
Working Working Distrib Repair
Generators Generators uted
Phase I 50 5 250 0 0
Hurricane
Alert
Phase II 40 15 250 100 0
Phase III 5 45 200 0 5
Phase IV 5 0 0 500 100
Phase V 0 0 5 1000 200
Table 1
Based on the information in Table 1, it is clear to see how the inventory could be drastically affected by the different
phases of this catastrophic event. This would obviously be a factor in determining precedence of distribution. In the
beginning, all 250 facilities are maintained with running generators ready, in place. With resources available
inventory-wise, the overall 250 were still functioning after the hurricane hit the city with a few generators replaced.
New Orleans survived Hurricane Katrina: what they didn’t survive was the failure of the levee system responsible
for retaining the water from the city. Once the surge from the storm broke through the levees, water surged down
the streets and eventually up over the roofs of some homes. All generators that weren’t elevated were damaged
beyond repair and obviously couldn‘t be used while others were incapacitated or unreachable. Some private
businesses and government agencies, actually had their generators stored in their basements making them vulnerable
to floodwaters. Worse yet, once the flood waters receded, the enormity of the damage was greater than anyone had
anticipated and generators were now in demand more so than had been anticipated.
These types of decisions could be made quickly, efficiently and more effectively reflecting the needs to a greater
extent given a scale, which could interpret degrees, which could then be translated into ‘importance’ indicators
weighing on the priority. For example, the experts could find it much more important to have one of the 5
remaining generators during the last phases of the event, allocated to a hospital and another to a nursing home. Life
threatening situations would be given priority where government facilities, although important, at the present
moment, were not judged so.
Decision Making and Paired Comparisons
During the phases, given the following set of choices for the allocation of generators:
{hospital, police station headquarters, ambulance, nursing home, super dome, command and control}
Phase I: Highest importance is command and control. This would be because all other facilities were running
properly. Although the threat was imminent, its potential to cause damage was still under undetermined.
Coordination was most important during this time.
{command and control, hospital, police station headquarters, ambulance, nursing home, super dome}
Phase II: The onset of a category 5 hurricane will change the rank given the potential for destruction has increased.
People in nursing homes and hospitals are trapped in the city at this point and now are given higher priority.
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7. White et al. Dynamic Delphi Processes in Emergency Response
{command and control, hospital, nursing home, police station headquarters, ambulance, super dome}
Phase III: The aftermath of the hurricane is assessed. Only a few generators are distributed. However, people have
been hurt, many tourists are still in the French Quarter sobering up from the past evening’s Hurricane party,
realizing they made it through a Category 4 hurricane unscathed.
{command and control, ambulance, hospital, nursing home, police station headquarters, super dome}
Phase IV: Floodwaters destroy all generators that aren’t elevated to higher levels. Newborns, sick children,
grandparents, and others are in the hospitals unable to leave. Refrigeration of medication and life support systems
have to have electricity in order to preserve life. This changes the priority level. Although command and control is
a must, it would run a close tie with the hospital at this point. Nursing home patients in need of dialysis, insulin and
other sorts of medical treatments must be given priority. However, due to assessment of the likelihood of
survivability, the hospital would have priority over the nursing home and give us a new sequence.
{command and control, hospital, nursing home, super dome, police station headquarters, ambulance}
Phase V: The floodwaters recede. Ambulances can now drive to rescue any remaining survivors. Everyone has
been evacuated from the city. The Super Dome is filled with refugees. Violence is rampant in the city and the
police must now try to reestablish order. The hospitals are closed, as are the nursing homes. Command and control
has now reestablished itself in a working environment. The new list is as follows:
{super dome, police station headquarters, ambulance, hospital, nursing home, command and control}
Further observations show some of the items in the list didn’t change much from their initial positions, such as
command and control and the Super Dome. This is reflected in the interval measurement derived from the presented
method. Also, the decisions concerning the items in the middle are given the proper amount of attention when detail
is required. This adds the beneficial insight into the decisions that need to be made, thus gaining more information
where needed and helping provide a better solution. Paired comparisons provides a precise reflection of the expert’s
judgment when concerning prioritizing of a set of items. So, with this system, an expert could be faced with a few
comparisons like
(nursing home, hospital), (ambulance, police headquarters) (super dome, hospital)
thus lessening confusion and strengthening accuracy of the group of expert’s collaborative estimation. Especially in
times of high stress, the simplification of a situation makes for a clearer understanding of what is being decided
when under pressure and amongst chaos. After a few comparisons, the overall list is reprioritized and present
decisions and thus actions will be based on this reorganization making for greater effectiveness in end results.
CONCLUSION
Even when all experts in a group may not be able to participate at the moment, or some may be unqualified to vote
on a particular matter, nonetheless, a decision must be made. This system is conducive for decision making given
the worst of conditions, utilizing the information as well as the experts to their fullest capacity. In a disaster, it may
appear that there are only poor selections after such a tragic event has occurred. However, a best decision must still
be made, thus minimizing potential future damages and hence, maximizing the best obtainable outcome for the
challenges that lay ahead.
A dynamic Delphi system will support real time decision making for virtual groups working in a changing
environment. The Internet provides opportunity and lessens previous geographic boundaries to a great extent. The
system is available online and is accessible anywhere there is Internet connectivity and a browser. In addition, the
involvement of community members coming together as emergency response resident collaborators can expedite the
dissemination of information and increase the coordination of local response utilizing tools such as the Internet, cell
phones, text messaging and other forms of communication devices (Shneiderman and Preece, 2007). Crises are, by
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8. Proceedings ISCRAM2007 (B. Van de Walle, P. Burghardt and C. Nieuwenhuis, eds.)
nature, filled with uncertainty and ambiguity as to the potential outcome, given the information on hand, in
connection with the present and/or probable future states. Using the knowledgeable individuals during the entire
process of problem solving and decision-making, gives the added benefit of collective intelligence.
The Internet promotes the collaboration of dispersed experts, some of whom due to their proximity would not
otherwise be able to participate. This greatly increases the availability for experts to share their knowledge amongst
numerous different groups since they can be at one location, but interact with many ongoing situations
simultaneously. Therefore, people who are experts and specialize in a field, can now be an invaluable part of any
decision that requires their unique expertise can fill positions that traditionally would have been filled by perhaps
someone less qualified due to the supply and demand economics of geographic location.
Had a system as described here been employed during Hurricane Katrina, using experts from all over the world, not
only would there have been a more organized and efficient response, but also, the political pressures for a national
leader to ‘save face‘, given the worldwide participation, would have influenced a more appropriate response.
National leaders are held accountable and this cannot be overlooked in the face of an insurmountable amount of
evidence, especially when the information is at the world‘s fingertips. For example, compare the response of
Katrina to that of the Tsunami of 2004. Just days after the tsunami, which was a larger scale disaster than Katrina,
there were organized efforts to fly in food and water and to provide aid. Compare this with Katrina where, days
later, the president surveyed the damage from Air Force One, his private jet, flying back from vacation. Nothing
had been organized or managed. People were still stranded and incapacitated as they initially had been and as they
would be for days to come.
Although the responders to the Tsunami disaster obviously weren’t using this system, they were using one of the
primary concepts here and that is that more experts can work globally together as a virtual community. And when
more knowledgeable individuals work together to solve a complex problem in good faith, there will be a better result
due to collective intelligence (Hiltz and Turoff, 1993). It is probable that this will promote larger groups of people,
dispersed geographically, to share their expertise and work on more complex issues together, thus improving
decision-making and outcomes of those decisions in an increasingly ubiquitous manner.
FURTHER COMMENTARY
There are two other viewpoints one can take from what has been developed here. Both are relevant to the
consideration of Emergency Preparedness and Response. In the context of "high reliability organizations" (HRO,
Weick and Sutcliffe, 2001), this is a method of taking tightly coupled components of a complex decision and
making it a looser coupled situation by the introduction of a human structured communication process. These allow
the humans to act faster and much more efficiently to conduct a rapid decision analysis. This is useful to the persons
that must trigger various alternatives
The second viewpoint is that this is an implementation method to carry out the actual evaluation mechanism implied
by Abbe Mowshowitz (2002) in his book on Virtual Organizations. It is a model based upon the knowledgeable
managers and professionals, maintaining two independent lists and establishing a rank order for those lists. This
creation of a dynamic collaborative interval scale would seem more appropriate for that model and for virtual teams
that could work the same way in dealing with complex problem solving. It is a mechanism that will enforce the
consideration of detail and not be eliminated as one of the dangers of undermining HRO type operations
Both views are augmented by the need to remove uncertainty and ambiguity form the solution from a complex
problem solving process by a larger group than cannot get together or function in a face to face setting. As in the
original Delphi concept, we are trying to use voting and scaling to promote understanding of what is hoped to be an
emerging best consensus on decisions that have no clear cut single criteria to resolve them.
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