CAREER: Data in Disaster: Socio-technical Change in Response Agency & Public Communications

该项目将开展跨学科的社会技术研究和教育，以解决信息技术在灾害环境中的当前和潜在用途。该研究将审查响应机构和公众的数据生成和共享活动如何对这两个实体之间的信息传播过程提出新的要求。研究设计包括对公民生成的文本、视觉和数字通信的实地研究，以及对自然灾害事件（如野火和飓风）中的事件情报和公共信息官员功能的实地研究。结果将以了解民族志的互动模式、数据生成和数据共享活动的形式出现，这些活动将被纳入组织和机构范围，为从事应急改革的创新者、应急从业者和决策者制定建议。来自联邦政府、国家机构、私营部门和学术界的对灾害预警、反应和恢复的高度和广泛关注。技术创新和应急改革意味着公众与应急机构之间的关系变得更加复杂。人们是天生的信息寻求者，在灾难等不确定的情况下，人们会坚持整合来自正式和非正式来源的信息，以使其有意义。照相手机、手机文本和图片信息以及个人全球定位系统技术的普及意味着，公众在灾难发生后自然进行的通信产生的数据可以用于救灾工作。挑战在于如何将这种新的数据途径纳入应对机构的活动。对于各机构来说，GPS能力的崛起与地理信息系统的结合正在改变事件情报所能产生的数据的种类和数量，这些数据不仅适用于事件指挥，也适用于日益精通技术的公众。通过这些活动，各机构与公众之间的接口正在发生变化。当局-公共事务-新闻媒体的旧的、完全线性的模式已经过时，正在被一种更为复杂的信息传播模式所取代。应对机构和公众之间的接口如何更好地组织和鼓励双向沟通和参与？该项目的一个重要教育目标是培养未来的从业者和研究人员，使他们能够理解为高度动态的灾难情况设计政策、流程和技术的复杂性。这项研究的成功依赖于纵向整合的教育和培训计划，其中包括从业人员和其他主题专家的参与，以及与自然灾害中心的合作。它利用研究产生一个模块数据库，用于需要领域、方法或理论指导的课程和推广活动。与国家妇女和信息技术中心的合作旨在通过使用本研究中的例子来说明信息技术职业的变化，从而增加妇女在未来科学和工程劳动力中的参与。研究、教育和成果传播工作建立在与政府机构和学术机构建立跨学科伙伴关系的基础上，并将开展联合研究和实践领域的活动。结果将以对他们有用的方式传播给开发人员、实践者和政策制定者。

This project will conduct interdisciplinary, socio-technical research and education that address the current and potential uses of information technology in disaster contexts. The research will examine how data generation and sharing activities by response agencies and the public place new demands on information dissemination processes between these two entities. The research design includes field studies of citizen-generated textual, visual, and digital communications, and of the incident intelligence and public information officer functions in natural hazards events such as wildfires and hurricanes. Results will be in the form of ethnographically-informed models of interaction, data-generation and data-sharing activity that in turn will be put in organizational and institutional context to formulate recommendations for innovators, emergency response practitioners and policy makers engaged in emergency response reform. Attention to disaster warning, response and recovery is high and widespread, coming from the federal government, national agencies, the private sector and academia. Technological innovation and emergency response reform mean that the relationships between the public and response agencies are becoming more complex. People are natural information seekers and, in uncertain situations like disaster, will persist in integrating information from formal and informal sources to make sense of it. Increased access to camera phones, phone text and picture messaging, and personal Global Positioning System technology means that the communications the public naturally engages in following a disaster produce data that can be appropriated into the response effort. The challenge lies in how this new data pathway could and should be incorporated into response agency activity. For agencies, the rise of GPS capability coupled with geographic information systems is changing the kind and amount of data that incident intelligence can produce not only for incident command but also for an increasingly tech-knowledgeable public. Through these activities, the very interface between agencies and the public is changing. The older, completely linear model of authorities-to-public affairs-to-news media is outmoded and is being replaced by a much more complex model of information dissemination. How can the interface between response agencies and the public better organize and encourage two-way communication and participation? An important educational goal of this project is to develop future practitioners and researchers who appreciate the complexities of designing policy, processes, and technologies for the highly dynamic situations of disaster. The success of the research relies on a vertically integrated education and training program that includes practitioner and other subject matter expert involvement and a partnership with the Natural Hazards Center. It leverages research to produce a database of modules for use in courses and outreach activities where either domain,methodological or theoretical instruction is needed. Partnership with the National Center for Women and Information Technology is intended to increase the participation of women in the future science and engineering workforce by using examples from this research to illustrate the changing face of information technology careers. The research, education, and results dissemination efforts are built on interdisciplinary partnerships with government agencies and academic institutions, and will launch activities that join fields of research and practice. Results will be disseminated to developers, practitioners, and policy makers in ways that are useful to them.