International Workshop on
Mobile Information Technology for Emergency Response
held in conjunction with the ISCRAM 2009 Conference
May 10th, 2009, Göteborg, Sweden
--- QUICK FACTS ---
Focus: Mobile ICT meeting the difficult conditions of emergency situations
--> Design approaches and technological aspects
--> Studying and understanding usage by professionals and the general public
Workshop Web Page:
http://www.mobile-response.org/uploads/media/iscram-09-workshop.pdf
ISCRAM Web Page:
http://www.iscram.org
Call for Position Papers (1-4 pages)
Deadline: March 19th
Notification: April 6th
Workshop Registration:
Submit to: [log in to unmask]
4 page abstracts can enter a fast-track submission with credited reviews to
Mobile Response 2009 (see www.mobile-response.org)
--- INTRODUCTION ---
Many mobile ICT systems for emergency response look nice on slides or when
demonstrated at fairs. But looking at them many people including prospective
users get an uneasy feeling about actually using them during an emergency.
Firefighters may wonder whether they really want to trust their lives to
some
new device and aid workers may wonder whether they really want to take some
new system half way around the world to some natural disaster location out
of
electricity and spare parts but abundant with rain and people in need of
immediate support.
We believe that these concerns are mostly well justified. Addressing them
requires covering two distinct aspects. First, the technologies and designs
must match the actual requirements of the fields. Given the diverse and
extreme nature of many emergency response operations this is already
surprisingly difficult to achieve. Second, even systems that match the
requirements of the field still have to earn the acceptance of their users
to
use them efficiently, effectively and with informed confidence.
Understandably, emergency workers are particularly reluctant about adopting
new systems because they have to rely on them for the effectiveness of their
support efforts or even their own lives.
Essentially, this challenge is the same whenever designing tools to support
some non-trivial work process. The particularity of supporting emergency
response with mobile ICT is that the requirements and constraints of the
domain are especially hard to study and understand and that in terms of both
the products and the process of design very specific solutions are required.
--- WORKSHOP ---
What we would like to offer with this workshop is an opportunity for
emergency
response practitioners as well as researchers and developers of mobile ICT
to
exchange their experiences with the challenges of creating mobile ICT for
emergencies outlined above.
As an inspiration and focus for the discussion here are four dimensions of
these challenges with related questions for which we invite participants to
submit position papers on case studies, approaches, methods and techniques,
recommendations and questions, technological concepts, system design,
and core technology components:
Rough and dirty
- How to create and deal with realistic usage conditions
when testing ICT prototypes for emergency situations?
- How to design and build robust systems?
Tough and stressful:
- How to create, assess and handle realistic psychological conditions
when studying activities and behavior in simulated emergency situations
such as trials or exercises?
- How to design services and interfaces for users in high stress situations?
Complex and confusing:
- How to observe and handle activities and behavior in large-scale emergency
situations with many actors in a large area?
- How to design systems that reduce complexity and avoid information
overload?
Trained and cautious:
- How to make emergency professionals who rely on their current familiar
equipment
effectively use and assess innovative technologies during field trials?
- How to design innovative systems that deserve and effectively receive
trust and
that are highly usable by both domain experts and relatively novice users?
During the workshop, each participant will have time to give a presentation
of 10-15 minutes. In order to fuel the exchange of experiences and
discussion we ask all presenters to focus on contributing to one or more of
the questions above by either refining them, formulating a hyopthesis, or
suggesting an answer and ideally by describing in concrete terms an
experience they had or studied of using or designing mobile ICT for
emergencies.
--- WORKSHOP CHAIRS ---
Markus Klann, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
Jobst Löffler, Fraunhofer IAIS, Germany
--- PROGRAM COMMITTEE ---
- Alexander Artikis, NCSR "Demokritos", Greece
- Chris Baber, University of Birmingham, UK
- Luca Chittaro, University of Udine, Italy
- Chris Johnson, University of Glasgow, UK
- Jonas Landgren, Viktoria Institute, Sweden
- Martha Larson, TU Delft, The Netherlands
- Andreas Meissner, Fraunhofer IITB, Germany
- Lucas Noldus, Noldus Information Technology, The Netherlands
- Jens Pottebaum, University of Paderborn, Germany
- Gurminder Singh, Naval Postgraduate School, USA
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