Emergency Response Systems: Past, Present, and Future

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Emergency Response SystemsPast, Present, and
Future

• Murray Turoff
• Information Systems Department
• College of Computing Sciences
• New Jersey Institute of Technology
• http//is.njit.edu/turoff
• turoff_at_njit.edu
• http//is.njit.edu

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Emergency Response Systems

• Planned Topics
• Nature of an Emergency
• OEP lore and experience
• Conceptual Design of DERMIS
• Dynamic Emergency Response Management Information
  Systems (DERMIS)
• First Layer of defense for the Public Body

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Emergency Management Characteristics

• Unpredictable
• Events
• Who will be involved
• What information will be needed
• What resources will be needed
• What actions will be taken, when, where, and by
  who
• No time for training, meeting, or planning
• No contingency plan that fits perfectly

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Emergency Management Requirements

• Obtain data, status, views
• Monitor conditions
• Obtain expertise, liaison, action takers,
  reporters
• Draft contingencies
• Validate options
• Obtain approvals, delegate authority
• Coordinate actions, take actions, evaluate
  actions
• Evaluate outcomes
• Modify scenarios and plans
• Modify community and operations

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Organizational Emergency Situations

• Strike
• Court Case
• Cost overrun
• Delivery delay
• New regulation
• Terrorist action
• Supply shortage
• Natural Disaster
• Production delay
• Product malfunction
• Contract Negotiation
• Loss of a key employee
• Loss of a key customer
• Responding to an RFP
• New Competitive product

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Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP)

• Existed until 1973 in the Executive Offices
• Derivative of OSS (Office of Special Services)
• Centralized civilian command and control in any
  crisis situation
• natural disasters, national strikes, commodity
  shortages, wartime situations, industry
  priorities, wage price freeze
• Command resources of all federal, state, local
  and industrial sources
• Could incorporate personal as needed from any
  source
• Did contingency planning and utilized large
  community of experts and professionals on a
  national bases

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OEP Wisdom I

• An emergency system must be regularity used to
  work in a real emergency
• People are working intense 14-18 hour days and
  cannot be interrupted
• Timely tacking of what is happening is critical
• Delegation of authority a must and
• Providing related data and information up, down,
  and laterally is critical
• Plans are in constant modification

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OEP Wisdom II

• Roles are the constant in an emergency and who is
  in a role may vary unexpectedly
• Training people in multiple roles is very
  desirable
• Roles and their privileges must be defined in the
  response system

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OEP Wisdom III

• Supporting confidence in a decision by the best
  possible timely information
• Necessary Properties
• Free exchange of information
• Delegation of authority
• Decision accountability
• Decision oversight
• Information source identification
• Information overload reduction

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Recent Supporting Wisdom

• . . . the key obstacle to effective crisis
  response is the communication needed to access
  relevant data or expertise and to piece together
  an accurate understandable picture of reality
  Hale 1997

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Other Supporting Wisdom

• Coordination by feedback viewed as failure of
  planning and failure of coordination by most
  organizations. Instead plan should focus on
  improving and facilitating feedback Dynes
  Quarenteli 1977.

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Six Specific Interaction Design Criteria

• Metaphors understood by professionals
• Human roles built in
• Others in paper
• Notifications integrated into communications
• Context visibility
• Semantic Hypertext relationships
• List processing at user level

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Metaphors I

• Log of an Event
• Root Event and Sub-events
• Lateral Events
• Each event triggered by specified role or roles
• Event Template
• A collection of events possible within the
  context of a given root event

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Metaphors II

• Events delivered to specified reactive roles for
  the event
• Events delivered to roles that have specified the
  need to track given parent events
• Event status is maintained
• Events can be categorized and/or marked by user

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Metaphors III

• Events have semantic links to all relevant
  information and data
• Forms for the collection of data
• Resources of concern
• Maps and Pictures
• Appropriate command choices
• Appropriate status options
• Parent, children, and Lateral events

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Example Resource Request Event Template

• Resource Request (location, situation)
• Allocation (or deny, delay, partial allocation)
• In transit
• Arrival of resource
• Status change in resource
• Status change in situation
• Recycle event
• Resource maintenance, reassignment
• Return transit
• Tailored event
• Completion event

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Roles in DERMIS

• Characterized by
• Events the role can trigger
• Required reactions to events
• Responsibilities for
• Actions, Decisions
• Reporting of data
• Assessing Information
• Oversight, assessment
• Resource maintenance
• Reporting, Liaison

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Fundamental Roles

• Resource Requests
• Resource Allocation
• Resource Maintenance
• Resource Acquisition
• Reporting and updating situations
• Analysis of Situations
• Oversight, consulting, advising
• Alerting
• Assigning Roles
• Coordination among different areas
• Priority and Strategy Setting

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Training with DERMIS

• Easy to establish training exercises based upon
  role-event structure
• Simulation driven by a sequence of timed events
  in real time tied to the clock or can be speeded
  up for some types of training
• Players can easily be simulated with respect to
  actions and generated events
• Small teams can participate with a much larger
  groups of simulated players

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Evaluating with DERMIS

• Examine log file of events and actions by roles
• Develop appropriate analysis tools to aid this
  process
• Discover and correct problems by improving system
  and/or improving training

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Recovery with DERMIS

• Can be used to direct and coordinate the recovery
  activity
• Can involve any diversity organizations and
  agencies involved
• Provides a complete record and accountability for
  the recovery process

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Auxiliary Supporting Systems

• Resource Databases
• Organizational Memory Collaborative Knowledge
  Systems
• Virtual Communities

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The Future

• Smart planning, talented people, and well
  designed adaptive communication / information
  networks are needed
• Change and disruption is more common than we
  think, even in commerce, and getting more
  frequent
• The technology exists to do what OEP used to be
  able to do and improve on those systems using
  modern technology
• However, does the organizational motivation and
  understanding exist to do it?
• The issue is designing new virtual organizations
  and communities that will change existing
  organizations and the way things are done.

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Full and future papers

• The Design of Emergency Response Management
  Information Systems
• Via http//is.njit.edu/turoff
• Future Meetings for papers on this topic AMCIS
  2004 and ISCRAM 2004
• http//howe.stevens.edu/AMCIS2004
• http//www.tilburguniversity.nl/ISCRAM2004
• Future journal issue
• http//jitta.org