Supporting Unstructured Activities in Crisis Management: A Collaboration Model and Prototype to Improve Situation Awareness

Abstract

Organizations orchestrate work along a continuum of structured and unstructured activities. Particularly in emergency situations and crisis management scenarios, the organization’s procedures and information systems may not cope with the information and collaboration requirements imposed by the dynamic of unplanned situations, emerging such unstructured work practices. In this paper we present a collaboration model and a PDA prototype to assist these unstructured activities aiming to improve their consistency and effectiveness. Inspired on the Reasons Swiss Cheese model for accidents, the proposed approach relies in the development of a shared Situation Awareness, constructed from a set of collaboratively constructed Situation Matrixes which expose involved users contributions to the overall solution strategy. An application Scenario in the Emergency management area is presented.