Information Technology Research (ITR): Responding to the Unexpected

该项目的长期目标是从根本上改变应对人为和自然灾害的组织收集、处理、管理、使用和向公众传播信息的能力。该项目探索了一种由两个相互关联的研究项目组成的多学科方法：--可扩展和强大的信息技术解决方案，以促进适当的个人和组织在适当的时间获取适当的信息；--社会科学研究，调查动态虚拟组织的独特性质，以及各组织和个人之间信息共享的社会和文化方面。所处理的研究挑战包括以下机制：使危机应对人员成为重要局势信息的丰富来源；无缝地从不同来源收集数据；将低水平的嘈杂数据转化为可有效用于损害评估和局势认识的有意义的信息；促进新兴虚拟组织之间的信息共享和集体决策；以对接受者最有用的形式迅速传播信息。已经与多个政府机构密切合作，在现场环境中测试和验证研究。该项目预计将产生强大的信息系统，使急救人员能够在知情的情况下作出更好的决定，确定其反应的优先顺序，并将重点放在最有潜力拯救生命和财产的活动上。由此产生的及时和有效的应对措施可以遏制或防止次生灾害，并减少灾害期间由此造成的经济损失和社会破坏。该项目将为文本、视频和数据挖掘创建新的共享数据集。这将允许更大的科学界针对这些现场收集的数据集测试算法创新。我们的社区外展计划将有助于提高人们对IT作用的认识，随着急救员与研究人员更密切地互动，将激励新的创新。我们的教育项目将产生一支训练有素的危机管理工作队伍。

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.