Information Technology Research (ITR): Responding to the Unexpected

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The long-term goals of this project are to radically transform the ability of organizations that respond to man-made and natural disasters to gather, process, manage, use and disseminate information both within the emergency response agencies and to the general public. The project explores a multidisciplinary approach consisting of two interrelated research thrusts:- Scalable and robust information technology solutions to facilitate access to the right information, by the right individuals and organizations, at the right time, and- Social science research that investigates the distinctive nature of dynamic virtual organizations, and the social and cultural aspects of information sharing across organizations and individuals. Research challenges addressed include mechanisms to: enable crisis responders to become rich sources of vital situational information; seamlessly collect data from heterogeneous sources; translate low-level noisy data into meaningful information that can be effectively used for damage assessment and situation awareness; facilitate information sharing and collective decision-making across emergent virtual organizations; and rapidly disseminate information in the form most useful to recipients. Close collaborations with multiple government agencies have been developed to test and validate research in live environments. The project is expected to result in robust information systems that enable first responders to make well-informed and better decisions, to prioritize their response, and to focus on activities that have the highest potential to save lives and property. The resulting timely and effective response can contain or prevent secondary disasters, and reduce the resulting economic losses and social disruption during disasters. The project will create new shared data sets for text, video and data mining. This will allow a larger scientific community to test algorithmic innovations against these field gathered data sets. Our community outreach programs will help generate greater awareness of the role of IT, stimulating new innovations as first responders interact more closely with researchers. Our educational programs will generate a better trained crisis management work force.