The Design of Collaboration Support Between Command and Operation Teams during Emergency

Response

Rodrigo Pinheiro Padilha PPGI - Graduate Program in Informatics

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil rppadilha@globo.com

Marcos R S Borges PPGI - Graduate Program in Informatics

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil mborges@nce.ufrj.br

José Orlando Gomes PPGI and Industrial Engineering Department

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

joseorlando@nce.ufrj.br

Jose H. Canós Dept. of Computer Science

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) Technical University of Valencia, Spain

jhcanos@dsic.upv.es

Abstract—The natural disasters occurred recently became one of the main press reports, especially the lack of adequate tools to manage emergency response. One of the aspects observed is the participation of field teams in the resolution of a crisis situation, mostly limited in sending information and executing tasks. Despite the importance of this communication, it is necessary to improve the interaction. Few studies have focused on how the operative use of information technology will affect the Command and Control System. More over, the development of more robust of new technologies and new mobile devices indicate new opportunity for the field teams to use information technology to support their activities. This paper presents a proposal of an information system to support interaction between emergency response teams and to evaluate their impact in a response organization.

Keywords-component Command and Control, Emergency, Crisis Management, Collaboration

I. INTRODUCTION Crisis management has getting increasing attention in the

academic community particularly after the recent big disasters. Nowadays additional prevention measures, better preparation of both decision makers and responders, and information systems to support the crisis management are examples of increasing support to emergency organizations.

So far, most technological support has been directed towards software development for control rooms, leaving the support for field operation teams in lower priority. On the other hand, the information sharing and understanding are essential for an effective emergency response. With recent advances in mobile computing, especially in robustness, there is an opportunity for using this technology in emergency settings.

This support for team work is one of the key aspects addressed by many initiatives, particularly during the response

phase of a disaster [11, 12]. Team work is essential to decision makers and first responders, particularly when dealing with a complex and/or big disasters.

Several important aspects of an emergency response management have been pointed out by the National Visualization and Analytics Center (NVAC) in a study chartered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. One of their recommendations addresses the support for interaction: “Interaction is the fuel for analytic discourse. These interaction techniques must adapt to the particular dimensions of the analytical situation, ranging from longer-term analytical assessments to urgent and highly stressful emergency response support tasks. These interactions must be adaptable for use in platforms ranging from the large displays in emergency management control rooms to field-deployable handheld devices in the hand of first responders. This is high priority for initial investments.”

Landgreen [14] wrote: “… there are studies that have explored how to design of information technology use for field settings such as, how to improve radio communication on the fire ground …, how ubiquitous computing could improve accountability and awareness for the fire crew… In these studies, interviews and observation has been the primary means for informing the design of prototypes and workshop sessions has been used to evaluate the prototypes…”.

Aside from this studies Diniz [19], developed a method to help analyst to specify information system to support team to operate directly in the emergency response.

The decision process in Command and Control (C&C) rooms has been covered in the literature and several studies indicate its complexity [1,2]. The same situation is true for the first responder process in the field, which is very dependent on its contextual knowledge of the event as well as the responder’s

978-1-4244-6763-1/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE

Proceedings of the 2010 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design

759

experience. These issues are also addressed in the literature [13, 14]. This paper focuses on the interaction between the C&C and first responders and how to support them. The paper addresses this issue from the perspective of the information exchanging. It covers the interaction processes, the information capture, transferring and the visualization. This first study aims to define a research framework to provide conceptualization, implementation and experimentation to develop an information technological device to support the aspects mentioned above.

The paper is divided as follows: Section 2 reviews previous work focusing on the interaction among emergency teams, Section 3 describes the interaction model proposal. Section 4 analyzes the dynamic interaction between C&C and field responders, the information used and exchanged. It also covers the communication devices and visualization mechanisms to support the interaction. In Section 5 we discuss the system implementation and experimentation scenarios. Finally, Section 6 presents the papers conclusion.

II. MODELS OF COMMAND AND CONTROL

The development of Information Technology System (ITS) to support the emergency response team work has many work published in the literature. For long time, crisis management systems were based in the military model of C&C [1]. For many authors [2, 3 and 4] the need to change the theories of emergency management creating new paradigms is imperative to improve the flexibility of the C&C structures. Their aim is to make them more efficient, multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional, increasing the collaboration between C&C and the field responders and allowing sharing planning and resources to stabilize the crisis [5].

Stanton et. Al. [7] proposes a new generic model of C&C based on field observation. One important conclusion he made concerning common characteristics in the different domains of C&C:

1. The presence of a remote control room; 2. The great dependency on verbal communication and; 3. The existence of collaborative discussion between

field teams and command. In the same article, Prof. Stanton also presented a taxonomy

containing seven categories for the main activities in the command and control environment: Request, Planning, Monitoring, Receive, Simulating and Communication.

The Incident Command System (ICS) [6] is a tool developed for command, control, and coordination of a response. It suggests how to coordinate the resources and efforts among agencies in order to stabilize the crisis situation. ICS defines six main functions as follows: Command, Operations, Planning, Logistics, Administration and Finance.

Based on the Stanton’s model and the ICS functions comparison, it came out two different C&C environments. The first concern is the control room, where the functions Command, Planning, Logistics and Finance/Administration are located. Another is related to the crisis location and respective field responders.

Figure 1. Crisis management cycle [20]

Using the data providing by Diniz [19] and considering Stanton and ICS models, six types of information flows are identified between the C&C and first responders, and grouped in 2 categories. The first is the information flowing from the C&C to the field response teams. And the second originated from the field response team. These flows of information are presented in Figure 2.

The start up of an information exchange process begins with an external call informing about an emergency situation. A response team is assigned to check the emergency call and get information about the event. The field responders will head to the event location exchanging information with the C&C room team. Once the field team arrived at the event location the information flow intensifies due to the data and information provided by the field response team to C&C team. During this exchange information process, a body of knowledge is generated, containing plans, procedures and actions by response teams.

According to Figure 2, it is possible to identify three levels of information exchange. The first one is an emergency situation report which shows to the C&C room an emergency snapshot. The second is a report containing the status and location of the emergency field responders as well as a global vision of the emergency situation. Finally, the third one, may exist or not, and consists on human and/or material resources. These types of information are sent to the C&C room continuously.

Figure 2. Main flow of information in the Command and Control

environment

760

The process of information exchanging was described by Diniz et al. [8]. Diniz et al. claimed that the decision making process is the result of the combination of personal previous knowledge with the formal previous knowledge, and the contextual current knowledge, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Process of Decision Making in Emergency Management [8].

The previous personal knowledge is all the information assimilated during trainings, simulations and other experiences that were internalized by the people. The previous formal knowledge consists of all maps, plans and other documents prepared previously and can be applied in the emergency response. At last, the current contextual knowledge consists of the collected information set provided by field response teams, sensors and other sources. This knowledge is dynamic and changes according to the situation evolution.

For the C&C room team to make better decision, it is necessary to have an increasing dynamic understanding of what is happening in the field and by consequence, the current contextual knowledge will be constantly updated. In this interim, the gathering of information and respective transformation to knowledge and subsequent distribution to all teams involved in the emergency response are crucial. Besides the capturing and the gathering of information, Kim et. al. [9] show other twelve problems faced by the response organization in the emergency response operations. From these twelve problem some are related to the information such as: organizing, integrating and sharing. Others such as early detection and response, resource allocation and culture, organizational and structural problems can also affect the current contextual knowledge’s building.

Another important issue which also influences the current contextual knowledge’s construction is the means to support the information transmitting. As observed by Stanton et. Al. [7], the use of verbal communications is very common using radios or other devices to send and receive information. Despite its efficiency, this method may have some information losses. For example, when there is a simultaneous traffic of information, like two persons using the same channel and talking at the same time. The situation can get worse when some electromagnet or geologic phenomenon can contribute for information losses. Another example provide by Kim et al. the authors argued that once the number of communications channel is inferior to the number of response organizations teams involved a loss of information could happen because there is no free channel.

Besides these technological issues, the information sending and receiving mode may creates another problem, when a person receives an information and makes an internal information interpretation and understanding they must send

this information forward, they will send their interpretation and not the real information. Some experiments showed that people inserted in the same contextual environment can take different decisions of what to do and how to solve the same situation. This will vary according to each person’s previous personal knowledge, its interpretation and its understanding [10, 16]. Yet, according to Hollnagel another aspect is when the information must pass through many people, it may suffer a mutation in quality content before getting the final receiver.

To minimize the problems mentioned previously, a possible solution can be the use of a technological support for information exchange. One proposal can be the use of SMS messages to improve its communication [20]. But in the practice when the maximal storage limit is achieved, new information will be lost. To solve the previous problem, a possible solution could be to use the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) or Model, View, Control (MVC) Pattern to develop application to mobile device to support information exchange.

III. THE DESIGN OF THE DATA MODEL To provide this type of tool, it is necessary to create a data

model. Based on Figure 2 it is possible to notice that the current contextual knowledge is modified by the decisions made in the C&C, by the actions done by the field response team and the emergency situation evolution.

The decisions made by the command are sent to the field response teams through operational tasks. The field response team receives this instructions and acts over the emergency situation. Because the situation is dynamic, some instructions can be changed to adapt to the new reality. The result of these actions will modify the situation context continuously. The field response team is responsible to update the current contextual knowledge (Figure 4).

Based on the figure 4 and compare to figure 2, it is possible to identify Information as basis class. As seen in figure 2, there is not just one type of information, but a large amount of it. Due to the type of information and its importance some must appear before others. To provide a solution to solve this issue another class called TypeOfInformation was created, including the type and the priority.

Figure 4. The response team is responsible to update the Current

Contextual Knowledge.

The class diagram also contains one class for the system users called User, another for the field response team identify as Team and the third one, a base class, identify as Person.

761

To become a system user, one must be a member of a team. Depending on her/his level (attribute of person) she/he will have access to different kind of information. Another class is Information2Team that contains the information code sent to specific team. This class is crucial for the debriefing. Last but not least, the class Event contains the type of emergency according the Brazilian disasters code. The entire diagram can be seen on Figure 5.

Figure 5. The class diagram for the prototype.

IV. DESCRIBING THE INFORMATION EXCHAGE PROCESSES According to Figure 2 there are six main processes that

occur in the response phase, such as:

i. Command order – the C&C room sends to the field response teams the priority actions to be developed. These orders are based on previous information were sent by the field response team on the field.

ii. Information Request– the C&C room asks data concerning the emergency situation context.

iii. Status Report– in this process the field response team informs how the actions affected the emergency evolution.

iv. Results Report– in this process the field response team just updates the previous information, basically giving the action results.

v. Resources Request– sometimes the field response teams need extra resources, human and/or material to accomplish the request made by C&C. This situation is defined like resource needs.

vi. Command Answer– the C&C respond to the field response team requests.

V. THE PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT A prototype has been built to be tested by one emergency

organization in emergency response exercises to evaluate its impact in the daily operations. In Brazil the response structure is defined by federal law in three levels: Federal, State and Municipality. The emergency response organization selected to have the prototype tested was the Civil Defense of Rio de Janeiro State in Brazil.

The prototype uses the MVC Pattern, it was first described by Trygve Reenskaug in 1979 working on Smalltalk at Xerox PARC. The aim of this pattern is to help splitting the responsibilities promoting lower coupling and higher coercion, making the system highly scalable.

Figure 6. MVC Pattern.

The choice to use this pattern comes to the mobility requirement, and from the use of mobile device. Another important issue concern the low cost implementation of mobile device. This requirements point to use cell phone as a main platform to capture, transmit and receive information.

According to Figure 6, the information is sent via http protocol to one or more servlets. These will write the information in a database and send back a response for to the sender that could be successful or not. In case of the information request process, beside the response code, the servlet will send the requested information if available.

It is important to notice that the View has two sides: on the first, the client that shows the Menus and other options to the user in the cell phone, and the server side that consists of the information sent to the device.

Once the cell phone was chosen some precautions need to be taken such as to design the navigation path to adjust image size to prevent time lost in the information exchange process. For this prototype a detailed navigation path is shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Prototype navigation path

762

Each box in Figure 7 represents one function in the system. The system begins with a login screen, and after the user logs in the system, the main menu shows a list of options. Depending on the users´ needs, they will fill the form with the available information and send it to C&C, via a SMS protocol or direct to the server. The information sent will appear in a tabular window in the C&C room.

Based on that, the C&C room can evaluate the request of new information and send a feedback to the field response team.

VI. CONCLUSION As described before the system is still a prototype, however

a first experimentation is already made involving Civil Defense officers of Rio de Janeiro State to evaluate the impact of the prototype. The first experiment result appears to be positive, according to the officers´ evaluation, because the tool provides a log containing the sequence of the event, the taken action history and improve the information exchange speed and to support the situation awareness. Nevertheless, to be the first experiment the preliminary results may indicate to be possible to test the prototype in a real situation.

Other aspects were observed by the officers related to interface customization associating a particular interface to the user level and his function. The second one refers to create shortcuts in the navigation process, the third concerns to adding a Bluetooth device in the field to support information exchange among the field response team.

Despite the positive evaluations in this first experiment its clear some other experiment must be plan and carry out to improve this prototype especially in a real situation context.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Marcos R. S. Borges and Jose Orlando Gomes were partially supported by grants from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico – CNPq (Brazil) No. 304252/2008-5, 480461/2009-0 and 484981/2006-4. The cooperation between the Brazilian and the Spanish research groups was partially sponsored by the CAPES/MECD Cooperation Program, Project #169/ PHB2007-0064-PC

REFERENCES [1] Dynes, R.R.: “Community Emergency Planning: False Assumptions and

Inappropriate Analogies”, Washington: International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 12 (2), pp 141-158, 1994

[2] Beroggi, G.E.G., “Preface: A new paradigm in emergency management”, Int. J. Emergency Management, 1 (1), p. 1-2, 2001.

[3] Rubin, C.B., “What Hazards and Disasters are Likely in the 21st Century - or Sooner?”, Natural Hazards Research Working Paper #99, Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center, University of Colorado, 1998.

[4] K, R. “A Common Vision for Homeland Security”, ArcUser, January-March, 2002.

[5] Trnka, J., Le Duc, M., Sivertun, A.: ”Inter-Organizational Issues in ICT, GIS and GSD – Mapping Swedish Emergency Management at the local and regional level”, ISCRAM, Brussels, Belgium, 17-19 April, pp. 75-82, 2005.

[6] FEMA. “Incident Command System: Independent Student Course”, 162 p. Available at http://www.fema.gov/, January, 1998.

[7] Stanton, N.A., Baber, C., Walker, G.H., Houghton, R.J., McMaster, R. Stewart, R., Harris, D., Jenkins, D., Young, M.S., Salmon, P.M.: “Development of a generic activities model of command and control”,London: Springer-Verlag, Cognition, Technology & Work, pp 209-220, 2007

[8] Diniz, V.B., Borges, M.R.S., Gomes, J.O., Canós, J.H., “Decision Making Support in Emergency Response”, USA: Information Science Reference, Encyclopedia of Decision Making and Decision Support Technologies, pp 184-191, 2008

[9] Kim, J K., Sharman, R., Rao, H R., Upadhyaya, S. “Framework for Analyzing Critical Incident Management Systems (CIMS)”, Proceedings of the 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2006.

[10] Hollnagell, E. Woods, D.: “Joint Cognitive Systems – Foundations of Cognitive Systems Engineering”, pp. 71-91, 2006.

[11] JS, “Command and Control as process”, IEEE Control System Magazine, March, pp 86-93, 1981

[12] Hollnagell, E.: “Human reliability analysis: context and control”, Academic, London, 1993.

[13] Smalley J, “Cognitive Factors in the analysis, design and assessment of command and control system”, In:Hollnagel E(ed) Handbook of cognitive task design. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, pp 223-253, 2003.

[14] Landgreen, J.: “Shared use of information technology in emergency response work: Results from a field experiment”, Proceedings of the 2nd International ISCRAM Conference (B. Van de Walle and B. Carlé, eds.), Brussels, Belgium, April, 2005.

[15] Monares, A., Ochoa, S. Jose Pino, J.A., Herskovic, V., Neyem, A.: “MobileMap: A Collaborative Application to Support Emergency Situations in Urban Areas”, CRIWG, 2009.

[16] Rasmussen J “The human data processor as a system component: Bits and pieces of model”, (Report No. Ris0-M-1722), Danish Atomic Energy Commission, Roskilde, Denmark, 1974.

[17] Ianella, R., Henricksen, K.: “Managing Information in Disaster Coordenation Centre: Lessons and Opportunities”, ISCRAM, Harbin, China, 26-27 Agosto, 581-590, 2007

[18] Mendonca, D., Beroggi, G.E.G. Wallace, W.A.: “Decision support for improvisation during emergency response operations”, International Journal of Emergency Management, Volume 1, nº1, pp. 30–38, 2001

[19] Diniz, V.B.: An Approach for Defining Knowledge Management Requirements in Emergency Response. Dissertation – Instituto de Matemática e Núcleo de Computação Eletrônica, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2006.

[20] Aligne, F. Which Information and Decision Support System for the Crisis Management? Information Systems and Technology Panel (IST) Symposium. Bucharest, Romania, May 2009.

763