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Information Sharing Among Disaster Responders - An Interactive Spreadsheet-Based Collaboration Approach

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Abstract

Recent natural disasters have led crisis management organizations to revise their protocols so as to rely on the contribution of a wider range of actors, including simple citizens as well as expert operators, to support decision making activities. Reliable and timely information sharing among members of distributed teams of disaster responders has become paramount for the success of the overall crisis management process. In this paper we propose a crisis management system based on spreadsheet-mediated collaboration among on-site responders and decision makers. To share data a common spreadsheet artifact has been developed by using a participatory design approach which is accessed through mobile user interfaces. The evaluation results showed that the use of the spreadsheet artifact has resulted in more effective decision making relating to set of earthquake management scenarios in high-risk areas located in Italy.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the group of people from the Civil Defence Agency and Municipality of Montemiletto, who gave their valuable contribution to this research. Three of them played a crucial role inside the design team, but thanks are also due to those who took part in the experimental study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Western Sydney, Penrith, Australia

    Athula Ginige

  2. Università di Salerno, Salerno, Italy

    Luca Paolino, Marco Romano, Monica Sebillo, Genoveffa Tortora & Giuliana Vitiello

Authors
  1. Athula Ginige
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  2. Luca Paolino
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  3. Marco Romano
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  4. Monica Sebillo
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  5. Genoveffa Tortora
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  6. Giuliana Vitiello
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Correspondence to Athula Ginige.

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Ginige, A., Paolino, L., Romano, M. et al. Information Sharing Among Disaster Responders - An Interactive Spreadsheet-Based Collaboration Approach. Comput Supported Coop Work 23, 547–583 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-014-9207-0

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