Collaborative Research: Information Technology and Emergency Response Improvisation: An Investigation

合作研究：信息技术与应急响应即兴：调查

• 批准号: 2020252
• 负责人: Raghav Rao
• 金额: $ 25万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at San Antonio
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-01 至 2025-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2020252&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Information; Technology; Emergency

Each year, in the US, emergencies cast devastating impacts on the civil and technical infrastructure, resulting in loss of human life, social and economic disturbances, and environmental damage. Because incidents are all different, first responders improvise when plans do not readily address a situation, where plans refer to documents detailing rules, standard operating procedures, roles, and organizational structures or any agreed-upon courses of action. Despite the importance of improvisation to emergency response, there exists a lack of accumulated knowledge on emergency improvisation, thus at the practice level it becomes difficult to transfer improvisation knowledge and skills from veterans to novices who are in need of such knowledge. An inability to properly improvise creates risks of response operation delays, inefficient allocation of resources, insufficient protection of operational safety, and mismanagement of crisis information. This project will explore the role of information technology (IT) in enabling and supporting emergency response improvisation. It will also investigate how organizational attributes and task-environment factors moderate the effects of IT support on improvisation. Expected research findings will guide IT vendors to develop new tools that offer improved support on emergency improvisation; help the emergency response community create organizational strategies and practices that better leverage IT for improvisational purpose.This project will adopt and extend Activity Theory (AT), a framework that is often used to describe collective actions, to the emergency improvisation context – we term this Crisis Response AT (CRAT). We will center our study of improvisation on upper to mid range Emergency Operating Centers (EOC) where IT could play a role in supporting improvisation. To collect a rich account of emergency response improvisation, the PIs will conduct interviews and focus-group studies of emergency response managers. The PIs will analyze the collected qualitative data and uncover major issues of improvisation, which are expected to result in a better understanding of how IT can be best used to address individual issues of improvisation. Following the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework, in addition, the proposal will explore important organizational and task environment factors that may moderate, either support or hinder, the effect of IT on emergency response improvisation. An online survey will be used to collect data from EOCs nationwide and test hypotheses derived from the qualitative work and theory. Survey data will be analyzed using advanced statistical methods. Finally, the PIs will develop and distribute a toolkit to help EOC managers develop and evaluate IT initiatives that support improvisation. This toolkit will be validated by emergency practitioners.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在美国，每年的紧急情况都会对民用和技术基础设施造成破坏性影响，导致人员伤亡、社会和经济动荡以及环境破坏。由于事件都是不同的，当计划不容易解决的情况下，第一响应者即兴发挥，其中计划是指详细说明规则，标准操作程序，角色和组织结构或任何商定的行动方针的文件。尽管即兴对应急响应的重要性，但缺乏关于应急即兴的积累知识，因此在实践层面上，难以将即兴知识和技能从退伍军人转移到需要这些知识的新手。如果不能适当地随机应变，就有可能造成反应行动延误、资源分配效率低下、行动安全保护不足以及危机信息管理不善。本项目将探讨信息技术（IT）在支持和支持应急反应即兴发挥方面的作用。它还将调查组织属性和任务环境因素如何调节IT支持对即兴创作的影响。预期的研究结果将指导信息技术供应商开发新的工具，为紧急情况下的临时应变提供更好的支持;帮助应急响应社区创建组织战略和实践，以更好地利用IT实现即兴目的。该项目将采用并扩展活动理论（AT），这是一个经常用于描述集体行动的框架，我们称之为危机应对AT（Crisis Response AT）。我们将把我们对即兴创作的研究集中在IT可以在支持即兴创作方面发挥作用的中高端应急运营中心（EOC）。为了收集丰富的应急响应即兴帐户，PI将进行紧急响应管理人员的访谈和焦点小组研究。PI将分析收集到的定性数据，并发现即兴创作的主要问题，预计这将导致更好地了解如何最好地利用IT来解决即兴创作的个人问题。此外，根据技术-组织-环境（TOE）框架，该提案将探讨重要的组织和任务环境因素，这些因素可能会缓和（支持或阻碍）信息技术对应急反应即兴发挥的影响。一项在线调查将用于收集全国EOC的数据，并测试从定性工作和理论中得出的假设。调查数据将使用先进的统计方法进行分析。最后，PI将开发和分发一个工具包，以帮助EOC经理开发和评估支持即兴的IT计划。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。