Emergency Response Systems: Past, Present, and Future

1. Emergency Response Systems:Past, Present, and Future Murray Turoff Information Systems Department College of Computing Sciences New Jersey Institute of Technology http://is.njit.edu/turoff turoff@njit.edu http://is.njit.edu (C) Murray Turoff 2003

2. 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” (C) Murray Turoff 2003

3. EmergencyManagementCharacteristics • 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

4. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

5. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

6. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

7. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

8. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

9. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

10. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

11. 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. (C) Murray Turoff 2003

12. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

13. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

14. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

15. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

16. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

17. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

18. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

19. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

20. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

21. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003

22. Auxiliary Supporting Systems • Resource Databases • Organizational Memory & Collaborative Knowledge Systems • Virtual Communities (C) Murray Turoff 2003

23. 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. (C) Murray Turoff 2003

24. 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 (C) Murray Turoff 2003