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

该项目将进行跨学科、社会技术研究和教育，以解决当前和潜在的信息技术在灾害情况下的使用问题。这项研究将审查反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进程提出新的要求。研究设计包括对公民生成的文本、视觉和数字通信以及在野火和飓风等自然灾害事件中的事件情报和公共信息官员职能的实地研究。结果将以互动、数据生成和数据共享活动的民族志知情模式的形式出现，而这些模式又将放在组织和机构的背景下，为从事应急改革的创新者、应急从业者和政策制定者提出建议。联邦政府、国家机构、私营部门和学术界对灾害预警、反应和恢复的关注度很高，也很普遍。技术创新和应急改革意味着公众和应急机构之间的关系正变得更加复杂。人们是天生的信息寻求者，在灾难等不确定的情况下，他们会坚持整合来自正式和非正式来源的信息，以使其具有意义。越来越多的人可以使用照相手机、手机短信和图片信息以及个人全球定位系统技术，这意味着公众在灾难发生后自然参与的通信产生的数据可以用于应对工作。挑战在于如何能够而且应该将这种新的数据途径纳入到应对机构的活动中。对于各机构来说，GPS能力的崛起，加上地理信息系统，正在改变事件情报不仅可以为事件指挥，而且也可以为日益精通技术的公众产生的数据的种类和数量。通过这些活动，机构与公众之间的界面正在发生变化。旧的、完全线性的当局对公共事务对新闻媒体的模式已经过时，取而代之的是一种复杂得多的信息传播模式。应急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实践者和研究人员，他们认识到为高度动态的灾难情况设计政策、程序和技术的复杂性。这项研究的成功依赖于垂直整合的教育和培训计划，其中包括从业者和其他主题专家的参与以及与自然灾害中心的合作伙伴关系。它利用研究产生一个模块数据库，供需要领域、方法或理论指导的课程和外联活动使用。与国家妇女和信息技术中心的伙伴关系旨在通过使用这项研究的例子来说明信息技术职业的变化面貌，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的跨学科伙伴关系的基础上，并将发起加入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、从业人员和政策制定者。

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.