The document discusses the importance of collective intelligence and community collaboration in emergency response settings, emphasizing the use of Dynamic Delphi for decision-making among local, state, and international responders. It outlines how a Community of Practice (CoP) can enhance knowledge sharing and decision-making through collaborative processes and real-time visual feedback. The proposed system aims to reduce information overload and improve outcomes in crisis situations by allowing continuous participation and flexible decision models.

1. United We Respond: One Community, One Voice Connie White Starr Roxanne Hiltz Murray Turoff NJIT

2. Motivation Emergency Situations cross boarders exceeding local resources Newly formed groups suffer from Threat Rigidity where pertinent information is lost Dynamic Delphi can create and sustain a group ‘voice’ for Community of Practice

3. Overview Responders can consists of local, state, national and international responders CERT civilian emergency response team Volunteer groups (firefighters, civilians) Delphi Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment for group consensus End result is ‘collective intelligence’

4. Community of Practice (CoP) ‘groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems , or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on a ongoing basis.’ Wenger

5. Community of Practice ‘ House the valuable knowledge and practice of how things really get done in an organization’ CoP is a natural gathering of individuals who have synergistic effect. CERT, FEMA civilian corps, military Not hierarchical, but collegiate collaborative decision-making Utilize Community Response Grid

6. Collaboration Roles: Human roles built into software Protocols: Processes for establishing results Structure: Knowledge structures such as Delphi to organize and provide modeled relationships, provide visualizations, scaling methods, etc.

7. Dynamic Delphi Member identity is anonymous: pen names or real names can be used Anyone can vote or have say on any topic Votes can be changed based on merits of arguments, new information, etc.

8. Dynamic Delphi Anyone can participate in any part of decision model Interaction is Asynchronous Participants don’t have to be co-located Visual Feedback that is real time

9. Group Consensus Thurstone’s Law of Comparitive Judgment Pair-wise comparison breaking down decisions into atomic unidimensional data Duress, Sleep Depravation, Multiple Expert Input Simplifies complex problems Lessens information overload

10. Information Feedback RealTime Creates Visual Scale of group opinion Allows individuals to know where they stand against group opinion Informs others where all stand on any issue, group opinions, group consensus Tells where each individual item stands relative to other items

11. Dynamic Decision Model

12. Dynamic Decision Making Any idea can be submitted by any group member anytime on a list Continuous vote on any proposed item Anyone can vote, change their vote, choose not to vote or hold vote until more information comes in Only best solutions are utilized and voted on

13. Information Overload Reduced

14. Visual Feedback

15. Visual Feedback Interpretation Indication of strong areas of agreement or disagreement Shows clusters of items indicating perceived equivalences based on some dimension Give a rank order of items on semantic differential where rank is relative

16. Expectations? More experts produce collective intelligence Flexible decision model reflecting human mind Reduction in Information Overload and complexity in decision-making Better decisions, better outcomes Flexible Environment

17. Future Research Build and test system on emergency responders Open Source software to reduce cost and increase usability – digital divide Domain is non-specific and can be used in many situations

18. Any Questions, Comments, Critiques, or Criticisms? Thank you! Connie, Roxanne, Murray