Improving Communication in Crisis Management by Evaluating the Relevance of Messages.
Efficient communication is a major challenge for emergency responders during crisis management. Reports show that missing information and information overload are important factors that determine the success of crisis management. We propose a method as basis for a software system that improves text or voice-based communication. Communication is split into segments and the system determines from the content of the communication, the tasks of actors and their locations for which responders in the crisis the information is relevant. The system is tested on data recorded at a fire fighting disaster management exercise and found to be accurate enough to be useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]/nCopyright of Journal of Contingencies & Crisis Management is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
gigabytes of audio datamanually converted to textdialogue exchanges (i.e., utterances) were segmented manually based on topicThis information is passed to the TAID system
Field exercise
correctness of the relevance assessments
The system is tested on data recorded at a fire fighting disaster management exercise and found to be accurate enough to be usefulTo evaluate TAID we used data from two operational disaster management exercises. The Commando Plaats Incident (CoPI) exercises were aimed primarily at on-scene commanders
scene commanders of all three emergency services (police, fire service and emergency medical services)Standard procedure for the local commanders (CoPI) is that officers meet each other every 30 minutes in a container that is installed at the location of a crisis to discuss the situation and share information. In total such an exercise takes about one and a half hour.To register the voice-data we attached microphones to the outfits of the officers-in-charge. In this way we could register all walkietalkie traffic per channel and face-to-face communications of the officers-in-charge.automatically recorded by the centralist control room
propose a method as basis for a software system that improves text or voice-based communication
the TAID tool needs connections to responders that allow it to monitor their communicationThe overall effect on crisis management depends on how relevance assessment is used in the work and communication processes and the extent to which in practice it improves availability of information.
The purpose of the evaluation is to see if the TAID system is indeed able to determine the relevance of new communications.Taken together the results show that the TAID system can make accurate evaluations of relevance of information for responders in a crisis but that accuracy is lower if the setting is broadened. Another finding is that evaluators do not completely agree on relevance.
Task-Adaptive Information Distribution (TAID) systemdevelopment and exercise.The purpose of the TAID system is to assess the relevance of information for responders in a crisis from their task descriptions, their roles, information about their locations and the content of their communication.
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