CAREER: Improvisation in Response to Extreme Events

该学院早期职业发展(Career)计划奖的研究目标包括综合研究和教育计划，旨在改善社会理解、计划和支持应对极端事件的即兴表演的方式。自然灾害或技术灾难等极端事件挑战着社会的规划和应对能力。正如极端事件决策的悠久历史所表明的那样，成功规划和有效应对的关键是灵活性。实现灵活性的一种方法是即兴表演：一种行为和认知相结合的活动，需要在紧迫的时间限制下进行创造性才能达到绩效目标。该研究计划的中心挑战是通过开发和测试关于应急反应中何时以及如何发生即兴表演的认知水平理论来提高对即兴表演的理解。该研究计划的第一个目标是产生关于即兴决策的认知水平理论，该理论源于档案研究、实验和与实践者的互动。该理论将以计算机可执行的形式表达，并通过与应急从业者的实验进行评估。第二个目标是将可计算理论集成到一个原型群决策支持系统中，通过在基于计算机的环境中进行实验来评估其对决策的影响。该教育计划的中心挑战是开发和评估技术和技术，以支持学习在紧急情况下何时以及如何即兴发挥作用。该教育计划的第一个目标是为应急从业者提供制定、分析和支持临时决策的培训。二是向高中生、本科生和研究生介绍应急领域的职业。三是使研究生和本科生能够参与到研究和教育项目中来。第四是向研究和实践者社区以及整个社会传播这两个项目的成果。整个项目的研究和教学计划的整合将通过面对面和虚拟社区的知识和活动共享实现，并监督主要研究人员和外部咨询委员会之间共享的工作。这项工作的智力价值在于应用建模科学在认知科学、决策和应急管理领域创造知识，从而满足开发跨学科方法来管理极端事件的需要。由此产生的认知理论将扩展现有的学术研究，为未来的研究提供基础，并纳入教育活动，其效果将作为研究的一部分进行评估。这项工作的更广泛影响是有助于提高社会计划和应对极端事件的能力。这项研究计划将提高对即兴表演发生时间和方式的理解，产生的结果将被转化为教育材料，供广泛的社会经济领域的学生使用。该教育项目将利用这项研究，在城市环境中的高中生和大学生中产生对应急领域的欣赏和兴趣。最后，研究和教育计划的结果将广泛传播给研究和实践者社区以及整个社会。

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award consists of integrated research and education programs designed to improve how society understands, plans for and supports improvisation in response to extreme events. Extreme events such as natural or technological disasters challenge society's capabilities both for planning and response. As indicated by the long history of extreme event decision making, a key to successful planning and effective response is flexibility. One approach to achieving flexibility is improvisation: a combined behavioral and cognitive activity that requires creativity under tight time constraint in order to meet performance objectives. The central challenge of the research program is to improve understanding of improvisation by developing and testing cognitive-level theory about when and how improvisation occurs in emergency response. The first goal of the research program is to produce cognitive-level theory about improvised decision making, derived from a combination of archival research, experimentation and interaction with practitioners. The theory will be expressed in computer-executable form and evaluated via experimentation with emergency response practitioners. The second goal is to integrate the computable theory into a prototype group decision support system, whose impact on decision making will be evaluated via experimentation in a computer-based environment. The central challenge of the education program is to develop and evaluate techniques and technologies to support learning about when and how to improvise in emergency response. The first goal of the educational program is to provide training to emergency response practitioners in making, analyzing and supporting improvised decisions. The second is to introduce high school, undergraduate and graduate students to careers in the field of emergency response. The third is to enable graduate and undergraduate students to participate in the research and education programs. The fourth is to disseminate the results of both programs to research and practitioner communities and to society at large. Integration of research and teaching programs throughout the project will be achieved through the sharing of knowledge and activities both face-to-face and in a virtual community, with oversight of the work shared between the principal investigator and an external Advisory Board.The intellectual merits of this work are in applying the science of modeling to create knowledge at the intersection of cognitive science, decision making and the field of emergency management, thereby addressing the need to develop interdisciplinary approaches to managing extreme events. The resulting cognitive theory will extend existing scholarship, provide the basis for future studies and be incorporated into educational activities, the efficacy of which will be assessed as part of the research. The broader impacts of this work are in contributing to society's ability to plan for and respond to extreme events. The research program will improve understanding of when and how improvisation occurs, producing results that will be translated into educational materials for students across a wide socioeconomic range. The education program will draw on the research to engender appreciation for and interest in the field of emergency response among high school and university students in an urban setting. Finally, results of the research and education programs will be broadly disseminated to research and practitioner communities and to society at large.