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Supporting Improvisation Work in Inter-Organizational
Crisis Management
Benedikt Ley, Volkmar Pipek, Christian Reuter, Torben Wiedenhoefer
Institute for Information Systems, University of Siegen
Hoelderlinstr. 3, 57076 Siegen, Germany
e-mail address: {firstname.lastname}@uni-siegen.de
ABSTRACT
Improvisation is necessary when planned decision-making
as the main managerial activity does not fit the conditions
the practice provides. In these cases, information
technology should not just automate planned and structured
decisions, but support improvisational practice. In this
contribution we present an empirical study about the
improvisation work in scenarios of medium to large power
outages in Germany. Our focus is on inter-organizational
cooperation practices, thus we examined the cooperation of
fire departments, police, public administration, electricity
infrastructure operators and citizens. Our empirical material
allows to describe reasons and conditions for improvisation.
Our resulting recommendations address the support of
aggregation and visualization of information, a necessary
individualization of information compositions, options for
collaborative situation assessment, requirements for
informal and formal communication, and accessibility of
information resources.
Author Keywords
Improvisation; Crisis Management; Collaboration;
Ethnography
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
General Terms
Human Factors, Design
INTRODUCTION
Crisis management is a practice field that by its nature
needs to prepare for the unforeseeable. The number of
influencing factors (weather conditions, number of people
affected, type of emergency, etc.) as well as structural
dependencies (electricity, roads and railways, fuel
resources, etc.) makes it impossible to plan all crisis
management activities ahead. Nevertheless, all
organizations that help guaranteeing civil security (police,
fire department, red cross, etc.) have developed systematic
approaches to deal with these uncertainties and to allow for
planned, coordinated activities in crisis situations. Still,
many situations require spontaneous, ad-hoc decisions and
short-term (re-)planning. The ability to improvise remains a
valuable asset for individuals and organizations, and is
usually cultivated in crisis trainings and grows with
experience.
While all these organizations have their established
responsibilities and practices, many larger incidents require
collaboration with these stakeholders. In Germany (and
many other countries), there are established processes and
practices of coordination between police, firefighters,
infrastructure maintainers and administrative staff, usually
prescribed by laws and regulations. All organizations rely
on strong individual IT infrastructures. These inform the
organization’s emergency management by maintaining an
overview on the current situation in an area of the
organizations responsibility and on available resources for
the crisis response measures the organizations feels
responsible to engage in, and by providing means to
coordinate emergency response activities. There is
anecdotal evidence that showed that despite all efforts taken
to be prepared, misunderstandings happened while actors
were forced to operate and interact outside the system of
established practices. Some of them may have been avoided
if the IT systems had not only supported routine processes
but also deviations.
Several examples of large crises (e.g. Hurricane Katrina
[17]) showed that improvisation abilities face a completely
different level of challenge when the crisis at hand is of a
magnitude that requires emergency response organizations
to collaborate. When dealing with larger power outages (the
scenario we are looking at in our research project
InfoStrom [24]), each of the organizations involved (police,
fire department, infrastructure providers, etc.) sets up an
own crisis management team. At county level a crisis
management group tries to coordinate the efforts and also
deals with the public. Nowadays, crisis managers as well as
the crisis response teams, need to improvise at an inter-
organizational level, and find their IT infrastructures not
always prepared for that. As [9] reveals it:
“Unfortunately, a focus on structure and doctrine obscures the need
for technology that enhances improvisation and creativity. The
specification and formalization of the planned-for structure has
resulted in doctrine and technology to support it, ignoring the
demonstrated, even inevitable, needs of the adhocracies that help
manage the unanticipated contingencies presented by extreme events
[…] Improvisation and adhocracy have received considerable
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CHI’12, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA.
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examination from social scientists, but have been far less frequently
addressed by ICT designers.” (p. 49)
But what is the exact nature of improvisation work
necessary in crisis response? Where do communication
strategies fail? And how can we provide IT support for
improvisation at an inter-organizational level? In this
contribution we present an empirical study of the inter-
organizational improvisation work of actors, which are
involved in scenarios of medium to large power outages.
We derive requirements for information systems that would
be able to support these practices.
The paper is organized as follows: After defining relevant
terms and discussing the literature we introduce the
research filed and our research methods. Afterwards we
focus on the improvisation practice we found in emergency
management. Then we discuss our findings and focus on
design issues with regard to IT support for improvisation,
finally followed by a conclusion.
IMPROVISTATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
IN CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Improvisation can be defined as “situated performance
where thinking and action seem to occur simultaneously
and on the spur of the moment” [4]. It can be interpreted as
the unforeseen [18]. While some authors define it from the
management perspective as “to be composed while
performed” [14] others describe it in the case of fire service
management as “thinking and doing unfold simultaneously”
and “retrospective sensemaking” [23].
Improvisation in Emergency Management
Antecedent conditions, such as unexpected problems,
changes in the structure of the problem areas or
environmental and knowledge limitations, lead to the need
for improvisation [18]. Even in highly structured
organizations improvisation is a well-grounded process that
can be leveraged to face those situations where rules and
methods fail [3]. Improvisation can be performed on
different levels and can be treated as an individual or as a
team phenomenon [12]. Improvisation becomes necessary
when beforehand planned decision-making does not work
for any reason. This is especially the case in crises. Crises
and emergencies often contain unexpected events. The root
word ‘krisis’ means ‘judgment’ and ‘decision’ which leads
to the most important task: decision-making. The
necessities to judge highly novel problems and to act
quickly reduce the chances of extensive planning:
“Decision makers in emergencies must be prepared to
improvise” [11]. Improvisation does not consist of more
sophisticated methods or more structured systems [4].
Instead of trying to eradicate it through automation, the
appreciation of flexibility and effectiveness seems more
adequate. There “improvisation and preparedness go hand
in hand” [9]: Without improvisation, emergency
management loses flexibility, without preparedness,
emergency management loses efficiency.
Characteristics of Emergency Management
To support improvisation in crisis management it is
essential to know the characteristics of the field. Based on
an analysis of the response to the 2001 World Trade Center
attack, the following characteristics of emergency
management can be considered as characterizing reasons
for improvisation [9]. Firstly, (a) rarity of incidences limits
opportunities for training and learning. Furthermore, (b)
time pressure forces a convergence of planning and
execution. (c) Uncertainty is present because the
development of an extreme incidence is hardly predictable.
Furthermore, extreme events have (d) high and broad
consequences, therefore there is a need to manage
interdependencies among a wide range of physical and
social systems. The (e) complexity of the event arises, partly
due to the high and broad consequences. Finally (f) multiple
decision makers and responding organizations may
negotiate while responding to the event. When more than
one actor is involved, decision-making is often a process of
“muddling-through” rather than a “scientific” process [8].
In emergency management this is not caused by a lack of
planning, but is necessary because “in fact the major
problem in emergency management is that the team often
does not exist formally until the emergency occurs” [21],
which is contrary to scientific communication processes.
Crisis situations differ from routine situations and actors
have to face new and unstructured tasks [15].
Supporting improvisation in crisis management
As stated above, decision-making is one of the main tasks
where improvisation is needed. Organizations need to
maintain flexibility in order to respond to unanticipated
events. Computer-based systems can support these
processes, if the system design is informed by an
understanding of the cognitive processes involved in
responding to unanticipated contingencies [9]. These
systems must support the actors to rework their knowledge
in order to fit the requirements of the current situation.
Information technology, supporting improvisation, needs to
handle ad-hoc coordination, unique problem solving
strategies and new or changed information needs [22].
Computer based comparisons of the current decision
situation with past ones were identified as appropriate in
this context [9]. Case-based reasoning systems, which
catalogue the set for planned-for situations or decision
alternatives, may be used for this purpose, too. Ad-hoc re-
planning and the ability to share material were identified as
design challenges for large-scale events [7]. Furthermore,
the following IT-supported mechanisms for improvisation
in emergency management are suggested: graphical
representations of data during crisis response, intelligent
systems that select and help to contact experts,
centralization of data to enable actors finding information
and virtual supported coordination to create shared
information consistent in time [1]. In addition, verbal
communication should be made persistent, visible and
accessible in order to support accountability [6]. Finally
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“ICT in disaster contexts will give further rise to
improvised activities and temporary organizations with
which formal response organizations need to align.” [13].
Much prior research focused on improvisation within an
organization. Our aim is to examine improvisation on an
inter-organizational level in order to derive requirements
for potential IT-support for improvisation work. Aside from
some theory-led considerations and case studies above, we
aimed to understand the local and collaborative practices of
the agents. Therefore we conducted an empirical study in
Germany focussing on improvisation work for actors
involved in scenarios of medium to large power outages.
RESEARCH FIELD
This paper reports from a study focusing on improvisation
practices during coping and recovery work at emergency
response agencies in Germany. We conducted this study in
two regions of North Rhine Westphalia in Germany
(counties Rhein-Erft (REK) and Siegen-Wittgenstein
(KSW)). Siegen-Wittgenstein is a densely wooded, hilly
county in the middle of Germany, whereas Rhein-Erft
consists of 10 growing communes in the west of Cologne.
In both regions we focus on several persons and
organizations affected: Infrastructure suppliers (e.g. power
supplier), public strategic administration (e.g. crisis
management, county administration), public operative
administration (e.g. police, fire department) and citizens.
Before we present findings from our empirical study, we
will have a quick look on two interesting aspects in advance
regarding police and firefighter forces at both counties.
Firstly, related to the organization of fire and rescue forces,
Rhein-Erft provides professional fire and rescue
departments, whereas Siegen-Wittgenstein’s firefighters are
mostly members of voluntary fire departments. Here, just
members of the control center have salaried positions.
Secondly, another interesting aspect emerged, while we
compared lead structures of both organizations. Despite the
fact that firefighter forces process coordination from the
field via incident commands, police forces in the field
receive commands from members of the control centers.
METHODOLOGY
The aim of the empirical study was to understand the
application field and improvisational practices in crisis
management. The view on the field was sensitized by our
design intention. We conducted a grounded theory oriented
approach [20], where we did not explore the field with
predefined categories, but derived categories from
empirical data. To reconstruct the practices we used
different qualitative methods [16] such as document
analysis, 4 observations, 5 group discussions, and 22
interviews including the development of a crisis scenario.
All empirical work took place at the
observants’/interviewees’ workplaces. All in all we talked
to more than 50 different actors from district
administration, police, fire department, red cross and energy
network operator (ENO). We used open coding [20] to
analyze the material and to uncover interesting phenomena.
We are neither focusing on similarities nor differences but
on breakdowns of practices that depend on inter-
organizational collaboration.
The primary goal of document analysis was to obtain an
overview of the organizations in crisis situations. We
analyzed documents that regulate and describe the work in
crisis management (laws, regulations, directives, and course
materials).
The observations were used to acquire knowledge about
practical work in inter-organizational crisis management.
These were conducted in a control center during a normal
working day (observation time: 9 hours), in the crisis
management group and the operations management during
a crisis communication training (4 hours) as well as on a
major cultural event with about 400.000 visitors (6 hours).
The group discussions (see table 1) allowed us to
understand the communicative practice of inter-
organizational crisis management. We conducted 4 inter-
organizational group discussions, each lasting of about 4
hours, including the participation of leading actors.
No
County
Topic
Participants
W1 - Challenges in
practice, Visit of
Control Center
Energy Network Operator
(ENO)
W2 REK Challenges in
practice,
Visit of Control
Center
County Administration
Police
Fire Department
W3 KSW
Challenges in
practice,
Visit of Control
Center
Department Head: Public Safety
Head of Civil Protection
Head of Police Control Center
Deputy Head of Control Center
District Fire Chief
W4
KSW
Analysis of
User
Interactions and
Communication
Flows
Head of Police Control Center,
Head of Staff Coordination,
Deputy Head of Control Center,
Local Head of Federal Agency
of Technical Relief (THW),
Local Head German Red Cross
W5
REK
Analysis of
User
Interactions and
Communication
Flows
Head Regulatory Authority,
District Fire Chief,
Red Cross: Disaster
Management,
Red Cross: Communications,
Members of other aid agencies
Table 1. Group Discussions
It is difficult to observe the practice of crisis management
within an actual crisis situation, because crises mostly
happen unforeseen. Furthermore, on an inter-organizational
level, it is hard to observe spatial distributed actors at the
same time during an actual crisis. To overcome these
circumstances, we and members of ENO, police and fire
department cooperatively developed a scenario framework
existing of a windstorm with many incidents and energy
breakdowns. The purpose of our scenario was to be able to
quickly create a common understanding of a crisis situation
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and context in our interviews. It helped to increase their
validity and comparability and to develop ideas concerning
improvements of tools to support improvisational practice.
The interviews (see table 2) allowed us to analyze the work
context and the use of information and communication
systems of relevant actors. The interviews lasted between 1
and 2 hours and followed an interview guide. The first part
of the interview focused the participants’ role, qualification,
activities and work steps in normal conditions. The second
part covered the tasks in crisis situations and was based on
the developed scenario framework. The third part covered
information and communication systems as well as
perceived problems with these tools.
No
County
Organization
Role
I1
KSW
Administration
Regulatory Authority
I2 KSW Police Head of Control Centre
I3 KSW Police Head of Section
I4 KSW Police Patrol Duty
I5
KSW
Fire Department
District Fire Chief
I6
KSW
Fire Department
Deputy Head of Control Center
I7
KSW
Fire Department
Workmanship
I24
KSW
Fire Department
Head of Control Center
I8
REK
Administration
Office Civil Protection
I9
REK
Fire Department
Chief Officer / Chief of Fire Dept.
I10
REK
Fire Department
Operation Controllers
I11
REK
Fire Department
Clerical Grade Watch Department
I12 REK Fire Department Control Center Dispatcher
I13 REK Fire Department Head of Control Center
I14 Köln Police Member of the Permanent Staff
I15
REK
Police
Head of Control Center
I16
REK
Police
Head of Group
I18
-
ENO
Higher Area, High Voltage
I19
-
ENO
Operation Engineer, High Voltage
I20
-
ENO
Operation Technician, Low Voltage
I21
-
ENO
Dispatcher, Low Voltage
I22 - ENO Workmanship Technical Incidents
Table 2. Interviews
RESULTS: IMPROVISATION IN PRACTICE
Facing novel problems and the need to act quickly, plays a
significant role in handling crisis situations. Our study
revealed that at both counties improvisation is a common
procedure of decision makers responding to uncertain
circumstances under risk and time constraint:
“Improvisation is essential, next to extensive planning. You
can have the best predefined response plans, but there is
always a situation, where you have to improvise.” (I1) or
“We improvise as usual. We see to it that we make the best
out of each situation.” (I11).
In this section we are going to point out existing
improvisation practices of actors involved in crisis
management (see Table 2), which have been identified after
analyzing existing coping and recovery practices. We have
divided this section into aspects of improvisation in current
management structures of emergency services, possible
causes of improvisation and conditions of improvisation.
Improvisation in current management structures
When we take a closer look at emergency response work,
we can see that improvisation is a common practice in
todays’ emergency management processes, besides
executing on one or more response plans. As we could see
at police work practices, to be capable of facing uncertain
events, flexibility is already part of their common working
procedures: “No, all workflows are flexible. This is
necessary, because each situation is different.” (I2). One
police officer explains, that “once there is a problem, our
command center gives us basically plenty of rope, to solve
the problem” (I4). When we focus on the degree of
improvisation or situated actions, our study identified two
factors: the audience and the scale of an incident. We have
to distinguish between two cases: “There are incidents,
which are managed by incidents commanders and there are
events, where a crisis management group is in charge”
(I1). Incident commanders are usually full responsible for
coordination and decision-making at the incident scene,
when response plans can be executed properly. This work is
not so much shaped by improvisation actions as by
executing predefined tasks: “We get the tasks and we
perform them” (I7). However, when emergency services are
faced with complex, unpredictable events and a bigger
picture is needed to perform further actions, a crisis
management group takes over decision-making on a higher
level. Because these kinds of events are “not static, they can
develop in any direction” (I5). At that point, response plans
can rarely be executed, the procedures in this group and on
decision-maker level “are more flexible” (I1) in order to be
capable of generating and executing new orders or plans
nearly simultaneously. An example of a typical order is:
“Look for schools or gymnasiums to accommodate 500
people. How you do it is your business.” (I1).
Reasons for Improvisation
Due to the uniqueness of each operation, the actors’
procedures during coping and recovery work essentially
depend on improvisation rather than on predefined
workflows. “This is necessary, because no situation is
equal to any other. […] Our work is fundamentally
different from other local authorities. There are no
predefined processes we are working off – we would be
helpless and lost. That's why we tactically work with frame
orders.” (I2). Although these frame orders describe
concrete tasks, the way how they are performed strongly
depends on the current situation in the field: “No one gets
told by us: ‘You have to enter the house via the left
sidewalk.’” (I2).
Improvisation work requires making in-situ decisions based
on the current condition. Hence, it is necessary to keep
track of the occurrences. Information resources, which are
considered for this purpose, often contain uncertainties and
have to be evaluated cautiously. For instance, in case of
severe weather alerts, preparations are made, e.g. putting
staff on standby. However, those warnings are published
too frequently and in many cases no critical weather
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conditions occur (I2). For that reason, many actors
individually collect supplementary information from
various sources, for example, the current weather condition
outside the building, other weather information systems or
webcams that are focused against the wind direction, to
obtain a better overview of the situation: “You need as
much information as possible.” (I24).
Besides the work in the control centers, on-scene actors also
depend on an optimal overview of the situation. For this
purpose, some of them use their private smartphones as an
information medium, because the authorities do not provide
such technology for their staff: “Some of the colleagues
have an Internet connection on their smartphone that is
often useful, for example to get an aerial image from the
locality via Google Maps to check other information. This
can be helpful for mediation, when you need a phone
number […]. Generally, we don't have navigation systems
on board and there is often the problem: ‘Go to house
number 17’ and when you have found number 5, the next
three numbers are hard to read and then you suddenly find
a house number 28 and then there is the question: ’Where
are the others?’”(I4).
Outside influences from an incident itself are not the only
reason that requires an improvised acting. Also
organizational factors and structures can bear unpredictable
challenges. That is why each actor will have to be able to
divert from given routines to be capable of acting even if
the given structures and circumstances change: “If a system
is strongly rigid and structured, and then one component is
missing, mostly the whole system will collapse. For this,
informal acting can be helpful.” (I1). Reasons mentioned
for such a collapse is that technology, especially
communication tools, can fail (I3) or internal information
resources (e.g. phone lists) required during an operation are
unavailable (I2). Also human factors play an important role.
Especially during major catastrophes staff members can
also be affected personally: “When an employee gets the
call that his home is flooded, you are trying to relieve that
staff member from his duties. It makes no sense to keep him
here. You would arrange a replacement and say: ‘Here,
care about your home or about your family.’” (I2) In
addition to organizational reasons, the collaboration with
other agencies requires a more flexible and improvised
acting in general due to different organizational structures
and work practices (I1).
In this context, terminological differences play a decisive
role. Depending on the individual structures and practices
of the respective organizations, different terms are used
which can cause several communicational issues: “There is
a person with a cut finger and an employee from THW
[agency for technical relief] reports this injury – This
nearly sounded like a fatality!” Due to the different focuses
of the organizations, it is difficult to expedite a
terminological assimilation. "Even if the police are talking
to the fire department, there is a big deviation in the
terminology and consequently terms are perceived
differently.” (W2). Terminological differences with other
organizations, especially in the private sector, can be even
greater. An example describes a misunderstanding about the
number of people injured after a fire in a factory where 19
casualties were reported: “People injured in the perception
of the factory management, consist of 19 people who were
only triaged by doctors but weren’t necessarily injured.”
Actually, in the understanding of the rescuers there were
only “two people whose health was affected.” (W2).
I5 and I4 mentioned that personal biases have a significant
impact on the interpretation of given information. Mostly,
members of the public with no professional expertise about
the current situation tend to exaggerate or to understate
their report about the current situation. For instance, one
citizen reported about “a major car accident” which led to
take actions by the local emergency medical services for
seriously injured or even dead passengers, while it was just
a minor car accident only with material damages (I5). I4, I5
reported about contrary cases, as well.
Within one workshop (W2) a firefighter reported about the
problem of losing and changing information during the
transmission between organizations. “We got the
information about several seriously injured kids, during the
world youth day in Cologne, 2005. After conducting
appropriate actions, we figured out that these kids were
hardly injured at all” The information changed, while it
was transferred from the first responder via skilled and non-
skilled organization members to the responsible medical
service.
Besides loosing available information, there is sometimes a
lack of information provided by infrastructure operators
(e.g. energy network operators or transport services). These
organizations do not necessarily inform proactively about
further development, but they have to be asked directly:
“The other actors have a different perception because they
concentrate on their problems and not on providing
information” (I15). In case of infrastructure operations they
sometimes provide information with missing details such as
the amount of affected households (I10): “What broke
down, how much of the energy network is out of work and
how many people are affected?” Many organizations
provide their information by email or phone, which is
another source of information that needs to be handled.
Further media disruptions in the field of retrieving
information occur in operations management where liaison
officers of the police usually cannot access information
provided by the police intranet. They always have to ask by
phone. For actors working in the field additional
information is usually obtained from the control center (I3).
For instance, in case of a fire they ask the control center
how many people are registered at a certain building (I4):
"How many people are registered at that address? For
example, we now have to match five people standing here in
front of the house who say that they left the house. Okay,
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now we must assume that others are still in the house. In
such incidents the registration office is probably the most
important source".
Conditions for Improvisation
We found several conditions and ways for improvisation.
Beginning with findings about the degree of improvisation,
the use of official systems and non-digital maps, we also
detected issues concerning privacy, trustworthiness, time
pressure and cooperation which influence the
improvisational practice.
Improvisation usually does not occur in the pure form:
“There is always a mishmash of formal structures and
informal ways” (I1). As said by the actors, structures are
important to handle basic tasks and flexibility is necessary
to react to very dynamic situations: “We have standard
measures and things, which we decide at the spur of the
moment.” (I13). Besides the fact that they have “a very
clear communication structure” (I2), they do not consider
themselves as an civil servant, such as an administrative
officer or a taxman: “We [police] and the fire department
work in a way which is different from all other authorities:
We do not have a litany that we follow strictly, because then
we would be lost.”(I2). This shows that they calculate with
a certain degree of improvisation contrary to detailed
planned processes that just need to be executed. The
decisions on the field level do not just base on regulations,
but on assessments of the situation and are done “within the
given clearances” (I9).
To decide what to do and how to deal with a certain
situation, much important information is necessary. Some
of the information to fulfil the work tasks in operations
management is provided by “official” information systems.
In major catastrophic events or in case of weather alerts
these internal information resources are enriched by many
external, informal information resources, which are
necessary in various situations. Therefore, actors sometimes
use about “40 windows which have to be observed” for
different applications and websites to have an overview of
the current state and to handle the situation appropriately
(I5). This external information includes webcams, water
levels, weather forecasts, wind directions, storm warnings
and traffic service. Much of that information is provided on
different websites – but not in a compulsory “official”
application – with the result that actors have to improvise
and search by themselves.
Besides information from third party providers, internal
information such as digital and non-digital maps is of
central importance for all actors to plan and to deal with
major catastrophic events. Emergencies always have a
geographic reference, therefore the operations management
and the crisis management group gather related information
on maps. Besides the utilization of technical supported
maps, actors also use different non-digital maps: “We
always have to work redundantly to prevent chaos during
technical breakdowns. We have to be able to proceed
anytime” (I9). In addition, the representation of the
resources and their availability are only maintained on non-
digital maps (I15). But this always depends on the given
incident and how likely a breakdown is.
Apart from the fact that actors are interested in information
of other organizations, privacy for their current state is
required: “Maps got nothing to do with anyone else but us,
because we do not reproduce the current state but rather
try to imagine what will happen next“ (I9). Due to the
strategic and tactical operations, maps are kept locked up
and cannot be passed to other agencies or organizations.
Based on available information, the operations management
does not just reproduce the current state but tries to foresee
how the situation will develop. It considers what could
happen next in order to derive actions and minimize the
resulting damage: “In the beginning we have to follow up
the damage. […] Our aim is to be in advance of the
incidents” (I9).
Trustworthiness is directly connected to reliability and
plays a significant role in sharing or retrieving information,
especially for those kinds of information which have high
impact on complex and lifesaving decisions: “The safest
information is the one I have seen by myself”. I2, I3 and I10
count on “good human relations” (I3) to members of other
organizations in order to ensure reliability and to accelerate
information verification processes. For example, I9
mentioned that “good connections to police members” help
to trust on information accuracy and to better understand
each other. However, “people who put themselves in the
limelight” (I4), even from the same organization, can affect
this relationships negatively. Because of the need for good
relationships, a lot of informal contacts and relationships
have been established alongside predefined communication
lines, especially in Siegen-Wittgenstein. “Police officers
directly talk to members of the leading group via mobile
phone and don’t take the way via section officers as it
should be” (I2). This can lead to a significant problem: The
loss of information. Furthermore, when receiving
information from non-trusted information providers such as
citizens (W3), each organization starts its individual
verification process. “If we receive a non-reliable
emergency call, we will just wait for a second call” (I3),
“we react on on-scene information from citizens but we will
immediately verify this information by experts” (I1) or I12
and I22 stated that they use ‘Qualified Interviews’ to get
appropriate information from non-experts.
“For security reasons we need up-to-date development
schemes and building plans” (I21). This shows that
timeliness is another important dimension of information.
All participants point out that, especially for handling crisis
situations, up-to-date information, e.g. on situation maps or
contact lists (I1), become more essential. However the
following statement shows a conflict to guarantee accurate,
complete and timeliness information: “The more stressful a
situation becomes, the less information can be provided to
Session: Performative Emergency Simulation
CHI 2012, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA
1534
others” (I3). Furthermore, particularly in stressful
situations, informal communication lines do not work
anymore because everyone has to do what they are
supposed to do (I15).
A wide range of emergency response actions shows that
improvisation is often a collaborative task. To deal with an
uncertain and changing environment during crisis
situations, usually a great number of people are involved in
gathering and analyzing data, decision-making and
monitoring of implementations and consequences. Two
quotations explain these practices. The first one from a
policeman on operational level: “We all have to get the big
picture of the scene at first. Than we have to coordinate
ourselves: finding appropriate ways of solving the problem
together and then running these actions” (I4). In addition, a
member of a command center of an ENO said: ”[…] but if
it’s critical anywhere, you will willingly ask a colleague:
‘What do you think about it? Give it the once-over.’ The big
advantage we have is that there are at least two of us sitting
here, even twenty-four-seven.” (I20). Focusing on crisis
management group work, our study revealed that there are
lots of improvisational actions. They especially occur
during coordination processes between members of
different agencies. To assess the potential impacts of
present or future events, members of the group (usually
police, fire department and county administration) share
their knowledge within the group or – depending on the
case – they have to consult external experts (e.g. members
of the residents registration office to access numbers of
occupants in case of a burning house). What we have seen
is that gathering and analyzing situation information and
decision-making is often performed cooperatively.
DISCUSSION
As shown in the results, no situation is equal to the other.
Highly novel problems require ad hoc decision-making
based on available information on the situation. This
information is not necessarily available in the own
organization. Especially during unique emergency events,
many external resources need to be consulted. Finding and
retrieving relevant information are still huge challenges for
several reasons:
1. Information is mostly distributed: Even routine
situations require managers to retrieve various
information, which is often not necessarily available at
the own organization. Managers have to access several
kinds of external information resources at different
organizations (e.g. weather services, electricity
providers, logistic companies, etc.) via different media
channels (e.g. phone, internet, face-to-face, etc.).
During non-routine events this typically takes place in
an ad-hoc manner.
2. Missing awareness about information available: Our
study revealed that current inter-organizational
emergency management lacks instruments, which
distribute meta-information about suitable and
available data or about resources at external
organizations.
3. Accessibility of Information/Policy Issues: Because of
technical shortcomings (e.g. missing appropriate
interfaces) and policy issues at the information
providers, retrieving relevant information is either
time-consuming or even not a possible task in many
cases.
4. Handling of information uncertainties: In reality data is
seldom absolutely reliable. Looking at current
decision-making processes, it shows that shortcomings
exist in providing accurate visual depictions of critical
data sets from different domains.
5. Terminology issues: Different symbols on situation
maps or different technical terms, for instance, make it
difficult to share information and knowledge between
organizations, especially when they originate from
other domains.
6. Perceiving interdependencies between information:
Certain Information resources are possibly only
relevant in conjunction with others (e.g. formation of
smoke and wind direction and strength). Those
interdependencies have to be identified to obtain any
necessary information.
Even if these challenges partially agree with earlier research
findings on coordination practices in emergency response
management [2] and previously identified challenges in
designing interactive systems for emergency response [5],
our study underlines their relevance on an inter-
organizational level. In the following sections we will
respond to these issues with regards to existing practices
that we identified in our study.
To overcome the shortcoming, that not every piece of
information needed is officially available or accessible at
current emergency management systems, actors have
developed several strategies. For example, by using the
WWW, actors have bookmarked websites with additional
information resources such as webcams, to check weather
conditions or the water level statuses of nearby rivers. Our
study shows that technophile people, rather than people
with less computer skills, have performed these strategies.
Taking a closer look on these information compositions
shows that they are arranged highly individual. Actors have
retrieved only those information resources, which are
suitable for their individual tasks.
Gathering and analyzing data, assessing the potential
impacts of events and executing related actions are main
activities of most of the actors we have described in the
antecedent sections. What we have seen, when
unanticipated events or unclear situation information
emerge, actors often consult colleagues or other experts to
collaboratively assess the information. Our study reveals
that situation maps are essential artifacts to fulfill these
Session: Performative Emergency Simulation
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1535
tasks. Analyzing data with colleagues with the same
knowledge background, in a same room (e.g. a control
center) and therefore with a common situation map, usually
works well. However, challenges arise when it comes to
sharing situation information with geographical distributed
participants or even with actors of different agencies. It can
be explained with the aid of two examples: In early phases
of emergency events members of emergency response
organizations are not necessarily at the same location to
consult about the latest events. For instance, members of
crisis management groups call each other from different
locations so that they are not able to use a joint situation
map. Even situation maps at the control center differ from
maps of on-scene commanders of the same organization,
therefore synchronizing missing information shapes
communication. This problem gets more significant when
actors of different agencies with different situation maps are
involved. Typically, these maps only visualize agency-
related information and use different terminologies and
symbols. This circumstance makes collaborative assessment
actions even more complicated.
Definitions about responsibilities and formal
communication channels in organizations usually work well
and are important for a smooth interaction within the
agency. However, the results show that structures can
collapse, e.g. due to the failure of technology, outdated
phone lists or human reasons. In this circumstance as well
as in urgent emergency situations it might be necessary to
diverge from rigid standards and to use unofficial channels
instead. The same applies to inter-organizational
communication, for instance, when a responsible liaison
officer is not available for any reason. Induced by the
different structures of the two investigated counties, the
significance of informal communication differs strongly.
The rural structure of Siegen-Wittgenstein and the mainly
voluntarily organized agencies entail that many of the
members know each other. As a consequence,
communication channels are much more informal than in
the more urban county Rhein-Erft. These differences
emphasize that both formal and informal communication
channels are equally important for cooperative work. To
support both there is a need for a better awareness about the
structures of involved organizations as well as the
availability of suitable contact persons including
capabilities for contacting.
Accessibility to required information resources is a big
challenge actors have to deal with. On the one hand users
do not know what information is available and where to
find it and on the other hand policy issues prevent the
access to certain information. A reason that information
cannot be found by the user is that they are mostly
distributed and not listed in a central directory. However,
the results of our study show that actors often consult the
same or similar information services during a certain
situation, no matter to which organization they belong to.
Hence, the question arises whether it is helpful to have a
central repository for information resources with access to
actors from any organization. Accessibility restrictions due
to policy issues are more complex to handle (e.g. non-
public information, such as the degree of power supply for
a certain area might be helpful for agencies during specific
emergency situations). Obtaining such information through
official channels can be extremely time-consuming. That is
why there is a demand for negotiation processes to allow
for a fast access to necessary information in crisis
situations, but also sufficient protection to prevent
malpractice.
SUPPORTING IMPROVISATION WORK IN INTER-
ORGANIZATIONAL CRISIS MANAGEMENT
One of the fundamental design requirements for supporting
improvisation work for the inter-organizational level is to
create a complementing information infrastructure, not a
tool to replace existing IT. Technologically, this can be
implemented relying on a service-oriented architecture that
allows to connect to the existing IT infrastructures in the
participating organizations. But with regard to the
functionality we need to support improvisation work at the
inter-organizational level we can outline five specific
implications for the design that focus on geographically
visualized data on information and collaboration resources:
Aggregation and Visualization of External and Various
Information
We have seen that, besides internal information,
information from other organizations is needed to get a
appropriate picture of ongoing and future events and
activities. Most information is spatial (e.g. emergency plans
for buildings or areas with electricity breakdowns). We
suggest an enhanced map-based information repository that
allows including different types of internal and external
information (e.g. place marks, weather information, specific
geo-referenced infrastructure maps, etc.). To avoid
information overload, the user should be able to save
specific map compositions. As confidence in information is
crucial, it is also important to distinguish between
information sources (particularly internal vs. external) and
degrees of information reliability.
Individualization of information Compositions
We have observed that actors of emergency response
organizations adapt information compositions due to their
personal needs. Users need instruments that enable them
(technophile and technophobe) to customize information
compositions in real-time. Users should have the
opportunity to easily show and hide information resources
on the map, to add additional and new information
resources to the map (that may also be provided by external
web services), and to add place marks with annotations at
specific locations in the map.
Supporting Collaborative Situation Assessment
The common practice to perform situation assessments
collaboratively needs an explicit inter-organizational
support. Actors need be able to share map-based
Session: Performative Emergency Simulation
CHI 2012, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA
1536
compositions of information resources with other actors in a
very controlled way. Visualization and interaction should
be possible in various environments and locations, e.g. from
a notebook at home, via mobile phones at the incident
location or on a large screen in the crisis management
center. Additional communication channels need to support
the collaborative analysis of the information on the map,
e.g. instant messaging services or audio channels. Because
current situations can change rapidly, all participants
require the option to modify information compositions on
the map approximately in real time. Issues of information
rights may occur while sharing information and
annotations; we address that below.
Supporting Informal and Formal Communication
Both, informal and formal (along official roles, usually
recorded/documented) communication channels need to be
supported. Actors should be able to spontaneously decide
which ones to use. For a better support of formal
communication the actor has to be aware of organizational
structures of his own as well as of other involved
organizations. In an ongoing incident, it is often not clear
which organization is reacting how, who is on duty and
how she can be contacted. Redundant and outdated
information can be avoided by providing a central
repository. For informal communication it is more
important to know who is in reach and working on a subject
I need information about. Organizational structures are less
relevant, but personal relations are: It may be good to know
who works ‘nearby’ (meaning spatial, but also social
distance) the contact I am interested in. Offering a large
variety of communication channels may be as important as
offering options for an informed choice among them.
Accessibility of information resources
Each of the organizations involved are using or hosting
information resources, or being an information resource by
producing information (e.g. the police ‘produces’ road
closures). All that may be relevant for other organizations
as well. For improvisational work, it is necessary to provide
mutual awareness of the information available: It requires a
shared information repository where proper services can be
registered, described and rated by the user. The information
resources could be selected as required by the situation and
could be integrated into the intermediate infrastructure.
Some of this information is subject to (e.g. for copyright or
security reasons) restricted organizational access policies.
For supporting improvisational work, it is not only enough
to map these policies to access rights at design time, but to
provide interactive access rights to allow for unforeseen,
but necessary information flows. Computer Supported
Access Control may support spontaneous information needs
while enabling the user to attempt access and to legitimate
it during use [19]. We are experimenting with various
access control mechanisms to simplify the access in crisis
situations but without undermining necessary policies. In a
first step three different types of access controls will be
implemented:
1. Role based access control: The access rights for each
information resource are predefined and based on the
user’s role. A user can either have access by definition
or not.
2. Gatekeeper access control: This more flexible
approach also predefines access rights. However, users
without assigned access rights can request those from a
so-called gatekeeper who has the right to allocate
access to unauthorized users or a certain time period.
3. Break-glass access control: This concept enables a
flexible and fast access to the required information.
Even if a user has no access by definition, he is able to
get access by breaking a symbolic glass. Thus, there is
no need to request access privileges from an authority
but every access is documented. That means that the
user must be aware of possible consequences when
“breaking the glass” unauthorized.
CONCLUSION
In medium to large crisis situations, the pressure on
emergency response organizations (police, firefighters,
administration, etc.) to collaborate with each other
effectively increases. While some aspects of coping and
recovery work are covered by negotiated procedures
(sometimes prescribed by law) and trained routines, the
variety of influencing factors and framing conditions
always leads to a need for improvisation also at an inter-
organizational level. Improvisation has been previously
addressed as a topic [1,9,10,11,12], but our study was able
to show additional difficulties we encounter at the inter-
organizational level. In our study of the improvisation
practices during larger power outages between police,
firefighters, public administration and an electricity
provider in two counties, we showed that improvisation
work suffers on the one hand from a lack of options for
sharing information among the organizations, but also from
a lack of awareness of information about the activities of
others, and from a lack of collaboration in consolidating
and interpreting the information available. If external
organizations required explanations about established and
successful inner-organizational practices for a successful
crisis management (and thus opened up for external
critique), there would not only be a severe possibility for
misunderstanding (even the organizational structures and
strategies of frequent collaborators like police and
firefighters are significantly diverse) but there would also
be concerns about becoming vulnerable against legal or
political claims.
Considering this aspect, it does not make sense to support
inter-organizational improvisation work in crisis
management with IT concepts that require centralized,
aligned procedures dominating the practices of the
individual organizations. It is more appropriate to offer a
complementary infrastructure that allows maintaining
informal information sources and manages informal
collaboration opportunities (e.g. for situation assessment)
Session: Performative Emergency Simulation
CHI 2012, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA
1537
that can as well be individualized/localized. The exchange
of information regarding own status, resources and
measures is also very valuable, but needs to be thoughtfully
protected with interactive (gatekeeper model, break-glass
model) access rights that allow easy information sharing
when necessary.
As a next step, we are going to develop such a
complementary infrastructure based on geographically
visualized data on information and collaboration resources
necessary for improvisation, and with additional support for
ad-hoc sharing of information. We also plan to integrate
citizens as potential crisis managers on their own behalf to
the scenario (as also requested in [13]). The most important
experience resulting from our studies here was: No matter
how much control and preparedness we wish for in the
event of a crisis, we need to acknowledge, support and take
pride in our abilities to improvise.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The project ‘InfoStrom’ is funded by the German Federal
Ministry for Education and Research (No. 13N10712).
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