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... The public has led the way in appropriating crisis-response technology. Recent mega-disasters have spurred a new kind of mega-collaboration in which thousands of people spontaneously work together via the Internet (Newlon and Faiola, 2006). The need to connect aid donors and recipients has highlighted the role of blogs, listbots, and online bulletin boards updated by ordinary citizens and their grassroots organizations. ...
... However, technology-empowered volunteers can present a serious management problem. Although they are geographically dispersed and demographically diverse, they must be coordinated as part of the overall response to avoid adding to the chaos of a disaster instead of reducing it (Denning, 2006; Newlon and Faiola, 2006). Therefore, a trade-off must be made between command-and-control requirements for the efficient delivery of services under extreme conditions and the need to respond creatively to unforeseen problems and coordinate thousands of spontaneous volunteers and emergency organizations (Harrald, 2006). ...
... Our development process for the MCT began with an initial set of user profiles and use cases, which led to a preliminary set of specifications and a concept prototype (Newlon and Faiola, 2006). We followed this with a more detailed paper prototype and a series of focus group sessions. ...
The need to gather and use decentralized information and resources in responding to disasters demands an integrated interface that can support large-scale collaboration. This paper describes the development of a collaboration tool interface. The tool will surpass existing groupware and social networking applications, providing easy entry, categorization, and visualization of masses of critical data; the ability to form ad-hoc teams with collaboration protocols for negotiated action; and agent-augmented mixed-initiative tracking and coordination of these activities. The paper reports user testing results concerning the data entry interface, emergent leadership, and the directed negotiation process. The paper also discusses planned enhancements, including formalized collaboration engineering and the use of a disaster simulation test bed.
... zens, empowered by information and communications technology (ICT), coming together to tackle tough, complex problems. Although this kind of collaborative project forms to confront any large-scale problem, the phenomenon is most dramatically manifest in disaster response. A specification of a tool to support mega-collaboration was outlined in 2006. [17] A major goal was to enable the coordination of citizen-generated information with that of the formal response effort. [20] The main idea behind the design is that a response effort can be divided among dynamically formed subteams with the aid of web-based software agents. Each sub-team can develop its own model to define its part of the ...
... sponses were in evidence following the World Trade Center attack, the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Pakistani earthquake, and Hurricane Katrina. [5] The months after Katrina's landfall saw a massive flow of information through hundreds of thousands of blogs, listbots, and bulletin boards, soliciting resources from donors and channeling them to victims. [17] Unfortunately, these two models have not worked well together. Divergent empowerment models result in divergent organizational cultures, methods, and outcomes. During Hurricane Katrina, the megacollaboration model succeeded where the NIMS model had failed. [17] NIMS functioned poorly in situations with many victims or volunteers. [20] N ...
... s, and bulletin boards, soliciting resources from donors and channeling them to victims. [17] Unfortunately, these two models have not worked well together. Divergent empowerment models result in divergent organizational cultures, methods, and outcomes. During Hurricane Katrina, the megacollaboration model succeeded where the NIMS model had failed. [17] NIMS functioned poorly in situations with many victims or volunteers. [20] Neither model is necessarily sufficient to provide complete disaster recovery, but with no easy way to pull together the topdown and the bottom-up activities, their combination may add to the chaos instead of reducing it. ...
Technology has enabled mega-collaboration on an unprecedented scale. A tool is needed to coordinate these activities and link them to government response efforts. However, in defining and responding to problems, teammates need to be able to visualize each other's mental models. The tool must encourage the team to advance promptly through team "forming, norming, storming, and performing." Finally, it must help individual teams visualize efficiently the "big picture," using agents to enhance the process. The usability of a prototype mega-collaboration interface has been tested, the second generation interface is being implemented, and a novel agent-based interface is being planned.
... The term originally referred to actions like unwittingly raising a website's search-engine rating by linking to it. However, recent disasters have spurred a new kind of megacollaboration , where people from around the world decide to work together to respond to a crisis [6]. Palin and Liu [8] studied this new phenomenon and noted that information and computer technology (ICT) has expanded the role of the public in disaster response. ...
... If the energy, skills, and resources of governments, NGOs and individuals could be effectively harnessed, the impact of disasters could be dramatically reduced. Unfortunately, with no way to dovetail official and spontaneous activity, this new grassroots empowerment could add to the general chaos of a disaster instead of reducing it [6]. Rather than addressing this problem, US government policy for formal disaster response appears to be running in the opposite direction. ...
... Even assuming no overt failure, this model works poorly in situations with many victims or volunteers [8]. Now that ICT has empowered the public, the conflict between these two approaches has become more conspicuous [6][8]. Palin and Liu call for designs to enhance the effect of citizengenerated information on the work practices of formal response organizations, to extend HCI/CSCW research to the improvement of command-and-control functionality in disaster situations [8]. ...
Public use of information and computer technology (ICT) in disaster response has become a new type of "mega-collaboration." However, government policy is moving in the opposite direction, toward a strict chain-of-command model. The resulting divergence can lead to inefficiency and weakened disaster response. Hence, there is a clear need for an interface that can bridge the gap between these two approaches. This paper presents a prototype solution as a focal point for discussing the application of current information and technology theory to the design of an interface for solving this problem. H5.3 [Information interfaces and presentation]: Group and Organizational Interfaces—collaborative computing, computer-supported cooperative work, theory and models, web-based interaction; I2.11 [Artificial intelligence]: Distributed artificial intelligence—intelligent agents; K4.1 [Computers and society]: Public policy issues—human safety.
The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of serious gaming for requirements acquisition. To accomplish this, a game-based requirements acquisition process model was formulated and applied through a gaming engine. The gaming engine was then used in a case study to identify and discuss outcomes and generalisation potentials of the formulated game model.
