Organizacija, letnik / Volume 40 Predlog za prakso / Professional papers številka / Number 2, marec-april / March-April 2007 Supporting Critical Multi-Organization Collaboration during Response to Catastrophic Events John R. Harrald, Theresa I. Jefferson The George Washington University, 1776 G. Street, NW Washington DC20052, USA, jharrald@gwu.edu, tjeff@gwu.edu The past two years have shown both the power of nature and the complexity of preparing for and responding to extreme events such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes/typhoons, and floods. These events, and future catastrophic events, will require coordination and collaboration between multiple government and non government organizations across national and state borders. This collaboration will require the discipline necessary to share common processes and procedures, and the agility to improvise plans and actions as situationally required. Information technology must be used to create an eRegion, enabling the shared situational assessments and adequately supporting the collaborative, distributed decision making to produce required decisions and future action plans. The role of information technology in developing these capabilities is discussed in the context of two seismic scenarios, the US New Madrid Seismic Zone, and the Adriatic Seismic region. Keywords: emergency response, disaster management, situational awareness, collaborative technologies, decision making, information technology Podpora kritičnemu multi-organizacijskemu sodelovanju v primeru odziva na katastrofične dogodke Zadnji dve leti smo bili priča tako môči narave kot tudi zapletenosti priprav na odziv in tudi samemu odzivu na nekatere ekstremne dogodke kot so potresi, cunamiji, orkani/tajfuni in poplave. Ti in pa bodoči katastrofalni dogodki bodo zahtevali usklajevanje in sodelovanje med mnogimi vladnimi in nevladnimi organizacijami prek nacionalnih in državnih mejá. To sodelovanje bo zahtevalo disciplino, ki je potrebna pri delitvi skupnih postopkov in procedur in pa prožnost pri improviziranju načrtov in ukrepov z ozirom na situacijo. Za vzpostavitev e-regije se mora uporabiti informacijska tehnologija, s čimer bi se omogočilo skupno ocenjevanje situacije in ustrezna podpora medsebojnemu sodelovanju in porazdelitvi pri sprejemanju odločitev, kar naj bi pripeljalo do ustreznih odločitev in bodočim akcijskim načrtom. Vloga informacijske tehnologije pri razvoju teh zmožnosti je obravnavana v kontekstu dveh potresnih scenarijev, v ameriški potresni coni New Madrid in v jadranski potresni regiji. Ključne besede: odziv v primeru naravne nesreče, katastrofični menedžment, situacijska osveščenost, tehnologije za sodelovanje, sprejemanje odločitev, informacijska tehnologija. 1 Introduction Extreme events such as the December 26, 2004 earthquake and tsunami and the August 2005 Hurricane Katrina impact large geographical areas, often these areas controlled by multiple national and local governments. The response to extreme events requires information sharing and coordination between hundreds of government and non government organizations. The multi-jurisdictional, crossborder collaboration will require the creation of a virtual eRegion. In earlier papers, the authors have described the organizational agility and discipline critical to successful response to extreme events (Harrald, 2006), and the information technology necessary to support the situational awareness, interoperability, and collaborative decision making necessary to support this agility and discipline. (Jefferson and Harrald, 2007). Discipline may be defined as the organizational structure, doctrine, procedures, and processes necessary to mobilize, organize, command, and control large multiorganizational response efforts. Agility, on the other hand, is the improvisation, adaptability, and creativity that are critical to coordination, collaboration, communication and successful problem solving. Discipline is the ability to operate, while agility provides interoperability. It is necessary to recognize that interoperability can not exist without the ability to operate. Over the last thirty years, the professional emergency management community has been working hard to increase the level of discipline in response systems in most areas of the world, most notably the United States. At the same time, social scientists have observed that the key to success in responding to and recovering from extreme events has been the ability to be agile-- to recognize and manage. Discipline and agility imply opposing information 109 management requirements. Discipline infers the support of rigid structures, pre-designated decision makers, and defined decision processes. This is a military command and control model. Agility implies the ability to support improvised decision making--decision makers outside of the formal organization, confronted with unanticipated circumstances and problems for which existing tactics and resources are inadequate. Two case studies, shown in Figure 1 are used to illustrate the challenges in using information technology to enhance situational awareness and to support distributed decision making in a distributed, multi-jurisdictional environment. The first case study is derived from the Central United States New Madrid Seismic Zone catastrophic earthquake project, funded by the US FEMA. A major earthquake in this region would require the integration of the response efforts of 8 US states, four Federal regions, and several large cities such as Memphis and St. Louis. The second case study is focused on a similar seismic region surrounding the Adriatic Sea where a major earthquake could impact 4 or more countries. This scenario is the basis for a proposed living laboratory initiative to be conducted in collaboration with the ALADIN (ALpe ADria INitiative) consortium of universities. Preparedness for and response to both earthquake scenarios will require multiple jurisdictions to collaboratively share information and develop a shared situational awareness adequate for supporting resource mobilization and decision making. This will require innovative applications of technology and eventually the abandonment of physical command centers where designated people gather for face-to-face meetings and for access to information. 2 Collaborative Decision Making and Situational Awareness Decision making is data, computationally and communications intensive, therefore it is inherently linked to information technology. Much of the recent focus in the U.S., for example, has been directed at achieving national inter-operability of voice and data communications for first responders. This focus on process and organization does not ensure that the technology will actually be useful in providing critical information to appropriate decision makers. As stated by a senior US official during the Hurricane Katrina response, “Everyone is making the point that we need information, inter-operability and communication - BUT NO ONE is articulating how it is used for decision making, how you apply it for saving lives and protecting property.” We know we need information, interoperability, and communication but the challenge is using it for decision making and applying it to accomplish the main goal of saving lives and property. Technical interoperability does not address the challenge of data interoperability among organizations and the need for common terminology. Responding to extreme events requires collaboration, cooperation, and transparency by numerous organizations with different cultures and structures. These values are not embedded in the hierarchical, military model, casting doubt on the effectiveness of a military command-and-control model (Granot, 1999). When a disaster occurs, responders must estimate the disaster’s physical impacts by integrating sparse data with prior knowledge obtained through a combination of prior modelling and experience. The responders must estimate the disaster caused needs for rescue, recovery and medical support and requirements for water, food and shelter. These disaster or hazard generated demands determine the size, type, and location of response forces to be deployed. The Organizacija, letnik / Volume 40 Predlog za prakso / Professional papers številka / Number 2, marec-april / March-April 2007 Figure 1: Comparison of the New Madrid and Adriatic Multi Jurisdictional Seismic Regions 110 creation of a response involving hundreds of organizations leads to response generated needs for the control and coordination of the massive efforts. The relationship of hazard and disaster caused demands are shown in Figure 2, based on Quarantellli (2005) Multi government, multi organizational response coordination and collaboration is based on the assumption that shared situational awareness will be attained and maintained. The concept of shared situational awareness and common operating picture originates from an aviation safety and combat domain. Transferring these concepts to a complex, heterogeneous emergency management structure will be exceedingly difficult. When evaluating the role of shared situational awareness it must be recognized that not all actors involved in the response and mitigation to an extreme event will require the same information. When attempting to consolidate information to obtain a shared situational awareness there is a very real possibility that information that is relevant to one or more parties will be inadvertently omitted (Jefferson and Harrald, 2007). Emergency response decision making obviously impacts future states of the system and hence future decisions. Decision making occurs in a series, one decision leads to the next. For example, if a decision is made to evacuate an area, more decisions will need to made. Where will people be evacuated too? How will they get there? What supplies will be needed? And the decisions continue. The information needed for subsequent decision will change as well as the parties included in the decision making process. Hence part of situational awareness in a distributed environment is knowing what other organizations and individual actors involved in the response are doing.. This leads to three critical attributes for agile disaster management: < the ability to monitor and detect changes in the environment, < the ability to monitor current and planned actions, and < the ability to customize the response to the current environment. One way to satisfy all three attributes is through the adoption of a virtual organization built on collaboration and cooperation. “Cooperation is central to agility; people and organizational culture must adapt to foster both internal and external cooperation,” (Reich, et al. 1999). However cooperation, can not be successful without the technological framework. Therefore, agility must be planned for. The agile organization required to support an emergency response effort involves the formation of a virtual “team”. Each member of this team comes with their own area of expertise, organizational culture and practices, and technology-specific proficiency as well as applicationspecific proficiency. The technological systems that will support this virtual, agile, team need to consider the attributes of the team member during design. The system will need to combine usability from multiple perspectives with the ability to adapt to different skill levels. The type and form of information that is presented to the team is also important. A number of factors concerning the interpretation of data need to be considered when moving decision making from (1) individuals in homogeneous groups at the same location to (2) distributed homogeneous groups and finally to (3) dispersed nonhomogeneous groups. < The disparate semantic meaning of the data collected < The ability to ensure or even know data quality (particularly the timeliness and completeness components) < Even when given the same data, non-homogeneous decision nodes will perceive the information differently Organizacija, letnik / Volume 40 Predlog za prakso / Professional papers številka / Number 2, marec-april / March-April 2007 Figure 2: Hazard Generated and Response Generated Demands 111 < Even when given the same data, and similar perceptions, different nodes will imply different meaning and requirements for future action As shown in Figure 3, adapted from (Ntuen, 2005) the objective of situation awareness is to allow collaborating decision makers to assess the current system state, using available information and their own knowledge and experience, in order to make adequate decisions during the present and to develop valid future plans. In this context, distributed situational awareness implies shared ability to understand and interpret information in addition to the ability to establish common access to information. Therefore, in areas such as the US New Madrid Seismic Zone or the Adriatic Seismic Zone, the pre-disaster establishment of the ability to gather, analyze, and display data will not ensure shared situational awareness and collaborative decision making when an earthquake occurs. As shown if Figure 4, pre disaster investments must also be made to ensure the development of shared semantic standards, the ability to evaluate the quality of information, and the knowledge and experience of the decision makers . Either scenario described above, the New Madrid Seismic Zone earthquake or the Adriatic Seismic Zone earthquake, would produce impacts across multiple governmental jurisdictions. The result would be a dynamically changing, situationally determined, geographically distributed group of decision makers expected to resolve issues, solve problems, and make collaborative decisions based on common information and awareness in a virtual eRegion. We believe that this Organizacija, letnik / Volume 40 Predlog za prakso / Professional papers številka / Number 2, marec-april / March-April 2007 Figure 3: The Objectives of Situational Awareness Figure 4. Requirements for Obtaining Situational Awareness 112 type of situation will eventually require the replacement of the concept of physical emergency operations center and command centers where designated people gather for face-to-face meetings and for access to collaborative technology with fluid virtual EOC’s where decision makers use technology to access information and each other from remote locations. Physical emergency operations centers are human resource intensive. A 20 station, 24 hour, 7 day a week EOC will absorb the full time efforts of 60 highly skilled people. The centers can become counter productive by failing to support the flow of information to emergent decision making groups, becoming information sinks and barriers to information flow when the volume of information exceeds the capacity to analyze it. Operations centers are also physical locations that are themselves vulnerable. The New York City EOC was located in building 7 of the World Trade Center and was abandoned prior to the building’s collapse. The New Orleans EOC was totally disabled during Hurricane Katrina. Information technology of the past has supported information collection and analysis at pre-determined sites (EOCs), supported predetermined organizational structures, and followed pre-designed information pathways. Information technology of the future will support agile, evolving structures and will allow for distributed awareness, analysis, and decision support in a virtual eRegion. The virtual emergency operation center (VEOC) is composed of a team of distributed experts whose task is to achieve a specific goal in a specific time. The VEOC is composed of inter-organizational teams, many of whom have extremely different backgrounds and have not previously worked together. An important aspect of this team is that their work is not done in a “project vacuum”. That is to say that besides the roles and responsibilities associated with the joint team, these members tend to have numerous other roles and responsibilities associated with their “home” organization. One distinct advantage of collaborative technology is its ability to allow individuals to work together towards a common goal while also allowing them to multi-task on other important functions. 3 Testing the Concept The George Washington University Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management is involved in two projects that will allow the testing of the concept of using technology to support agile disaster response in multi-jurisdictional eRegions through the creation of virtual operations centers (VEOCs). The first project is the FEMA funded New Madrid Seismic Zone Catatstrophic Preparedness project where the eRegion is a region of 8 states and 4 Federal regions. During the current first phase of the project, the University of Illinois Mid American Earthquake (MAE) Center and the GW ICDRM will develop improved loss estimation models and methods for estimating hazard generated and response generated needs. The second phase will facilitate multi state, multi region planning and exercising. During this stage, the concept of supporting distributed decision making groups using web based technologies will be investigated. The concept of a VEOC will also be tested in a LivingLab experiment in Central Europe led by the University of Maribor, the George Washington University, and other Universities associated with ALADIN, ALpe ADria INitiative Universities’ eNetwork. The objective of the LivingLab Safe and Secure eRegion is to develop a multidisciplinary research and testing platform concentrating on identifying a domain of potential action from the users’ point of view. The Living Lab will bring together researchers, developers, and users in a virtual environment. The goal will be to determine what information is needed and how can it be produced. Prototype solutions will be developed and tested in a simulated and real environment. The LivingLab project will test the use of collaborative software in particular, IBM Rapid Response. The project will focus on : < Creating and linking university centers < Exploring how university centers can enhance connectivity between governments, private and public organizations, and the community < Demonstrating how technology can assist in attaining and sustaining situational awareness in distributed network < Generating scenarios and then evaluating different IT in terms of its ability to facilitate distributed decision making and communication < A low risk failure environment (test technology, procedures, linkage) 4 Conclusions Information technology will change disaster management as profoundly as it has changed other aspects of human endeavor. Technology will make organizational systems more agile and responsive and less tied to physical artifacts such as Emergency Operations Centers. Technology will enable individuals and organizations to improvise and to adapt and to track what other organizations and individuals are doing in complex, chaotic environments. There arehowevermajor technologicalissues that must be resolved. Reliable and high quality video capabilities will be essential to ensuring the full communication required to ensure trust and understanding in an emergency. Decision support and information analysis and display tools will have to be highly mobile and distributed. All decision makers must have access to the same information. Security concerns will have to be identified and resolved. Finally, if all decision makers are directly interacting with the technology, the technology will have to be much more useable than the current generation of EOC technology. For example, Geographical Information System plots and images produced by satellites and other sensors are currently delivered by a technology group within an EOC. Will decision makers be able to create their own GIS and imagery products? The organizational issues that must be resolved are, however, as significant as the technological ones. Organizations must become flatter, decentralized and less rigid. Leaders must trust decision makers on the scene and allow information to flow to where it is needed. The payoff for Organizacija, letnik / Volume 40 Predlog za prakso / Professional papers številka / Number 2, marec-april / March-April 2007 113 an achieving a technology enhanced, distributed collaborative decision making environment is, however, immense. It will allow mobilization without bureaucratization, collaboration without the creation of an expensive physical overhead. It will enable tools and procedures to work in a virtual eRegion in a single nation environment such as the US, a multination developed region such as Central Europe, or for the international response to a disaster in a developing region. Most of all, the development of appropriate technology will allow the agility and flexibility to respond creatively to unexpected events and situations, saving lives and minimizing human suffering. References Endsley, M. R. (1988). Design and evaluation for situation awareness enhancement in Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 32nd Annual Meeting, Human Factors Society, 24-28 Oct. 1988. Anaheim, CA: The Human Factors Society. Federal Emergency Management Agency. 2006 Hurricane Season Concept of Operations Plan (CONOPS), Washington, DC. The Department of Homeland Security. Granot, H. (1999). Emergency Inter-organizational Relationships. Disaster Prevention and Management, 8: 21–30. Harrald, J.R. (2006). Agility and Discipline: Critical Success Factors for Disaster Response. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 604: 256–272. Jefferson, T. & Harrald, J.R. (2007). Shared Situation Awareness in Emergency Management Mitigation and Response, Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 3-6 jan. 2007. Computer Society Press. Ntuen, C. A. (2005). A model of sensemaking in dynamic organizations: A review and implications for military decision making, Department of the Air Force, Washington, DC, Tech. Rep. N66020. Quarantelli, H. (2005). Catastrophe’s are Different from Disasters: Some Implications for Crisis Planning and Managing Drawn from Katrina. Disaster Research Center Working Paper, University of Delaware. Reich Y., Konda S., Subrahmanian, E., Cunningham, D., Dutoit, A., Patrick, R., Thomas M., Westerberg, A., & the n-dim group (1999). Building Agility for Developing Agile Design Information Systems, Research in Engineering Design, 11: 67- 83. Turoff, M., Chumer, M., Van De Walle, B. & Yao, X. (2004). The Design Of A Dynamic Emergency Response Management Information System (Dermis), Journal Of Information Technology Theory And Application (JITTA), 5(4): 1-36. Websites Projects: Situational Awareness from Multimodal Input (SAMI) The Regents of the University of California, CA, available from: http://www.itr-rescue.org/research/sami.php?PHPSES SID=135eab00577aa61c2e08bc228e526f51 John R. Harrald is the Director of The George Washington University Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management and a Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering in the GWU School of Engineering and Applied Science. He is the Executive Editor of the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council’s Disaster Roundtable Advisory Committee. Dr. Harrald has been actively engaged in the fields of emergency and crisis management and maritime safety and port security and as a researcher in his academic career and as a practitioner during his 22 year career as a U.S. Coast Guard officer, retiring in the grade of Captain. Dr. Harrald received his B.S. in Engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, a M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, and an MBA and Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Theresa Jefferson is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering. Prior to joining the GW faculty she worked for SAIC as a consultant to the US Army and NASA. Dr. Jefferson has many years of practical experience in the areas of information management, computer systems, operations research, and systems analysis. Her research interests are in the areas of information technology for crisis, disaster and risk management, software engineering, and electronic commerce. Her education includes a D.Sc. in Engineering Management, an MS in Systems Analysis, and a BS in Operations Research and Computational Sciences from the George Washington University. Organizacija, letnik / Volume 40 Predlog za prakso / Professional papers številka / Number 2, marec-april / March-April 2007 114