Collaboration Resilience: Restoring Human Infrastructure with Technology

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In recent years, we have experienced major events that have disrupted critical infrastructures all over the world: 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and numerous wars. These events have resulted in huge work disruptions with substantial economic costs. Such disruptions are not new. What is new is that we are now living in an age where networked mobile information and communication technologies (ICT) are nearly ubiquitous for many people worldwide. This research examines how human infrastructure, the patterns of relationships of people through various networks and social arrangements, can be repaired using ICTs when the environment is disrupted. In partnership with IBM Haifa (Israel), the primary data collection for this project will be an ethnographic field study of people's experience with the recent Israeli-Lebanese war. Analysis of these data will inform requirements for technologies that support people in their attempts at restoring their human infrastructure for accomplishing work following a major disruption. The key innovation in this research is its comprehensive and integrated view of the interplay between the human and technical infrastructures. Broader Impacts: Effective collaboration has a vital role in society and understanding how human infrastructure can be repaired in the aftermath of an environmental disruption will benefit people's lives in very real ways. These results can also help organizations to develop effective plans for restoring the human infrastructure for collaborative work.