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A case study of information flows in multi-agency emergency response exercise

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 The Proceedings of the 10th International Digital Government Research Conference
A Case Study of Information Flows in
Multi-Agency Emergency Response Exercises
Nitesh Bharosa JinKyu Lee
Delft University of Spears School of Business
Technology Oklahoma State University
The Netherlands USA
n.bharosa@tudelft.nl Jinkyu_lee@hotmail.com m.f.w.h.a.janssen@tudelft.nl
ABSTRACT
Successful disaster management requires efficient information
sharing and coordination of multi-agency emergency response
operations. This paper compares two types of multi-agency
emergency response exercises where multiple relief agencies are
required to collaborate, using a set of information communication
technologies, in response to large-scale disaster scenarios. The
analysis shows that many decision-makers and information
managers suffer from a lack of information availability awareness
and that the information flows are heavily regulated by the
institutional structure and organizations involved in multi-agency
emergency response, which may not achieve the full potential of
the available ICTs’ technical capabilities. As a result, information
systems should be conceptualized in a way that the system
includes the underlying political and organizational structure,
institutional rules/operational procedures, norms, and most
importantly, the human actors. The paper also discusses several
points that seem to have important implications to successful
emergency response.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.5.3 [Information Systems]: Group and Organization Interfaces
for Synchronous/Asynchronous interactions, Collaborative
computing, Computer-supported cooperative work,
Evaluation/methodology, Organizational design
General Terms
Management, Performance, Design.
Keywords
Emergency response, Disaster management, Case study, Inter-
organizational System, Socio-technical system, Information
sharing, Information flow, ICT, System design.
1. INTRODUCTION
Poor information quality has been blamed for various problems in
recent large-scale disaster response activities, such as 9/11 [5], the
2004 Asia tsunami [12] and the Fire in the Schiphol Detention
Complex [16]. For instance in the response to the 2004 Tsunami,
“mostly, the information was incomplete, yet conclusions must be
drawn immediately” [12] and in the response to hurricane
Katrina, “the federal government lacked the timely, accurate, and
relevant ground-truth information necessary to evaluate which
critical infrastructures were damaged, inoperative, or both” [14].
Another example can be found in the response to the major fire at
Schiphol Detention Complex, where the Dutch firefighters
rushing to the area had received inconsistent information about
Copyright © 2009. Copyright held by author.
Marijn Janssen H. Raghav Rao
Delft University of School of Management
Technology University at Buffalo, SUNY
The Netherlands USA
mgmtrao@buffalo.edu
the available gates to the area and were delayed in finding the
right gate providing them access to the area [16]. These examples
underline the need for high information quality for relief workers.
Due to the inherent complexity [2],[3], pressure [13] and
uncertainty [10] of most disaster situations, achieving a high-level
of information quality is an essential, yet challenging requirement
for successful emergency response operations [1, 4, 6, 7, 15].
Moreover, large-scale disasters require sharing and coordination
of information between a large number of autonomous agencies,
causing even more frictions in the relief activities [1].
In order to understand how information is managed and shared
during multi-agency emergency response (MAER) situations and
how information quality problems can be avoided or addressed,
we examined two types of MAER exercises conducted in the
Netherlands. The reason we chose to examine the exercises is that
they offer researchers more opportunities for data collection,
whereas the precarious nature of a real disaster would prohibit
researchers from collecting data during the turbulent response
processes. This study adopted field research techniques [8] to
collect and triangulate qualitative, as well as quantitative data
from real first responders and disaster management personnel
participating in the MAER exercises. The current paper follows a
qualitative research approach and presents preliminary findings
from our research in a case study format.
The two types of MAER exercises are described in the next
section, followed by an explanation of the research methodology.
We then present our findings and conclude the paper with a
discussion about the findings and future research directions.
2. MAER EXERCISES
2.1 The VIKING Program
In order to improve collaboration and information sharing
between relief agencies at the Dutch-German border, the Province
of Gelderland (Netherlands) and the Province of Nordrhein-
Westfalen (Germany) have joined forces since 2004. Together,
they organize annual cross-border multi-agency exercises on
flood management. The driving initiative for this cross-border
collaboration is that this region is particularly prone to major
floods because of the Rijn River flowing through Germany into
the Netherlands. Moreover, this region had its share of floods in
the past, underlying the necessity for collaborative exercises. The
collaboration program is labeled as VIKING, of which translated
is an acronym for improving information sharing in times of flood
management at the Dutch-German border (for more details, see
www.programmaviking.nl). The first part of this program took
place in the period of 2004-2006. VIKING 2 is the sequel
program planned for 2007 to 2009 and includes two exercise
programs, Eagle and ROAR. Because of the large scale nature of
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 The Proceedings of the 10th International Digital Government Research Conference
the ROAR exercise, we decided to examine this three-day, three-
echelon, and multi-location exercise in April 2008.
The explicit goals of the exercise (as formulated by the exercise
leader whom we interviewed) is to improve (1) multi-agency
collaboration between relief agencies on different echelons of
response (strategic, tactical and operational), (2) information
sharing between the Dutch and German relief agencies, (3)
information provisioning to the operational units during floods,
and (4) developments of a common body of skills in using
information systems for flood control. In order to train each of the
echelons of response (strategic, tactical and operational), the
exercise was divided into three days, each with one week in
between. The following figure summarizes the exercise design in
terms of date, exercise type and the echelon trained. Note that the
blocks represent the hierarchical order and their relative size (the
number of participants) of each of the echelons.
Strategic echelon Apr. 24, 08
Decision making 2 locations
Tactical echelon Apr. 17, 08
Info sharing & coordination 5 locations
Operational echelon (action/field unit) Apr. 10, 08
Repression of disaster effects/ execution 5 locations
Figure 1. The ROAR exercise agenda and trained echelons
The figure gives an overview of the three exercises we observed.
The basic scenario of the exercise was written in a script form and
was only known to the exercise leaders. The scenario contained
multiple incidents, including dike breaks alongside the Rijn River
(in both Germany and the Netherlands) and a shipwreck spilling
toxic but unknown chemicals into the river. Uncertainty was built
into the scenario in terms of the unknown number of civilians and
animals in the affected areas and the time it would take before the
entire region would be flooded. The scenario exercised was the
same for all three exercise echelons and simulated a GRIP-4 level
disaster, the highest level disaster according to the Dutch disaster
classification system [1]. The GRIP system is explained in the
next section. The exercises and the scenario were designed
according to a relay structure. First, the operational echelon was
trained, primarily focusing on the water management boards
exercised. The next exercise, the technical echelon, picked up
where the field units left off. Finally, the strategic level picked up
where the operational level left off. Hence, the output in terms of
information of each exercise was used as input for the higher
echelon exercise. In this way, each echelon was dependent on the
information provided by the preceding echelon, which is in
accordance with the protocol for a real disaster. During the
exercise, the exercise leaders provided counter play to the
echelons being trained. This means that, for instance, when the
operational echelon was being trained, the counter play, in terms
of decisions and events of the strategic echelon and
actions/information needs of the field units, was provided by the
exercise leaders based on a predefined script. In this way, each
exercise captured all levels of emergency response and simulated
278
the entire socio-technical response system that would develop
during a real disaster.
During the exercise, both the Dutch agencies and the German
agencies used their own proprietary information and
communication systems, except for one common system: a flood
management system called FLIWAS, which is an abbreviation for
Flood Information and Warning System. FLIWAS is a high-level
water control application built from a Dutch-German cooperation
and is funded by the EU. The purpose of this application is to
optimize the exchange of information during (threatening) high
water situations within and between water management and
calamity management organizations. This application is built
using generic components (e.g. communication with databases,
internal and external communication, import provider, plan
module and web mapping). The scenario was designed in such a
way that information on the flood was to be shared between
Dutch and German relief agencies, and thus FLIWAS played a
central role in the information sharing across the Dutch-German
border.
Alongside the agency specific information systems, five systems
were used to facilitate information sharing among the Dutch
agencies during the exercise. The first system used, ARCmap, is a
map based geographic information system designed to portray the
same location information to all agencies. During the exercise the
output of this system was referred to as sitPlot (situation plot).
There were multiple versions of this application used. The second
information system used for inter-agency information
communication in the Netherlands is C2000, which is the standard
communication system for almost all relief agencies in the
Netherlands and is used during the daily operations of the
exercise participants. The third information system used is
FLIWAS, which was also used for cross-border sharing of
information, and already explained above. The fourth information
system used was the Evacuation calculator. The evacuation
calculator is an application for simulating the evacuation of
civilians and animals in the effected region. This application
allows users to determine the necessary resources needed for a
timely evacuation. Finally, a customized version of MS Groove,
CCS (Command and Control System), was used for note taking,
information clustering, and situation report communication. Its
messages are referred to as sitText, which means information on
the situation. Currently, the province of Gelderland uses this
application to experiment with the generation and sharing of
situation reports for common situational awareness across agency
boundaries. Accordingly, the role of information manager was
developed to utilize the capabilities of CCS technology during
emergency situations. Essentially, this means that the information
manager takes notes on the situation electronically and clusters
the information exchanged during a multi-agency decision-
making session into an electronic form, which then can be stored,
edited and disseminated in the response echelon and
communicated to the higher strategic echelon. The text in CCS is
shared with all participants using a central monitor.
2.2 Rotterdam COPI Exercises
The Port of Rotterdam (PoR) is one of the world’s largest
seaports. Approximately 1,600 businesses operate in the major
harbor area, moving an enormous amount of chemicals and other
hazardous materials around the POR every day, making it a
disaster prone area. The harbor area stretches over 10,000 Ha
 The Proceedings of the 10th International Digital Government Research Conference
(38.6 square miles), entailing over 11 different municipalities and
3 provinces, having their own mayor and relief agencies. Hence,
when a disaster occurs in this large area, chances are high that
multiple municipalities will be affected and have to respond to the
event, underlining the need for information sharing and
coordination. In order to help the various local emergency
response agencies to prepare for large-scale disasters, the Safety
Region Rotterdam-Rijnmond organizes several MAER exercises
in the POR area each year. Hence, similar to the province of
Gelderland, multiple emergency management exercises are
organized each year. In Rotterdam, however, the exercises are
focused on training each echelon separately, so the exercise
results do not affect each other as was the case in Gelderland. As
a result, over 30 exercises are organized each year, of which half
are on the strategic level. In the Netherlands, unlike the US, the
three primary responder agencies (i.e. police, fire, and ambulance
services) are not called out together in daily operations (GRIP-
Level 0). Therefore, the regular MAER exercises offer valuable
and necessary experience of collective decision-making and
coordinated multi-agency operations to various first responder
agencies in the area.
The Dutch command structure during a disaster is prescribed by
law in the GRIP (Coordinated Response Procedure) procedure.
The GRIP levels indicate the severity and span of the disaster and
can range from level 0 to level 4. GRIP level 0 is considered to be
a routine incident that can be handled by a single agency (e.g. a
small traffic accident or local fire). Level 1 events are small scale
disasters requiring the collective response of multiple
stakeholders, while GRIP level 4 is activated in a severe, large-
scale disaster where the municipality mayors are required to make
strategic decisions (e.g. a terrorist attack). In a MAER situation
like our case, there are two levels of decision-making units: the
Regional Operational Team (ROT) and the Commando Place
Incident team (COPI). The ROT is usually organized in a remote
location, the COPI is set up in a trailer near the incident area and
the field units. During a disaster, the ROT focuses on strategic
response topics, such as civilian evacuation planning, while the
COPI focuses on tactical response (e.g. getting victims off the
ship). Both of these decision-making units consist of a regular
staff, supporting staff, and ad-hoc/situation-dependent advisors.
The two scenarios for the exercises involved 1) a ferry collision
with a cargo ship and the potential leak of toxic chemicals in the
water and 2) a fire/explosion on a big cruise ship and passenger
evacuation, both of which are regional-scale disasters crossing the
border of multiple municipalities (up to GRIP 3). The participants
in the studied exercises were also determined according to the
GRIP levels in the scenarios, which included commanding
officers and supporting staff from the Police, Fire, Ambulance
services, Chemical/EPA services, Municipality government, Port
Authority, and National Army. Each COPI consisted of around 12
members, and the total participants for COPI exercises were 72.
The exercises were conducted on Nov. 27 and 28 and Dec. 4 and
5, 2008. The time span for each exercise was about 3 hours, with
30 minutes of plenary introduction and debriefing before and after
each exercise. The decision-making in COPI were cyclic and it
took about 15 minutes per cycle.
COPI exercises also utilized multiple ICTs for inter-agency
information sharing: 1) CityGIS, a Google map based geographic
information system, 2) CEDRIC, an extended e-mailing system
that allows relief workers to generate, store and edit situation
279
reports across agencies, 3) C2000, the standard communication
system for almost all relief agencies in the Netherlands, and 4)
GMS, a system to automatically document and assign incidents to
first responders. Much like Gelderland, Rotterdam also
experiments with the roles and capabilities of the information
manager in decision-making units. The main difference lies in the
use of technology. The information managers in Rotterdam use
CEDRIC, whereas Gelderland uses a customized version of MS
Groove for situation report generation and information sharing.
Just one year ago, a different tool was used for this purpose,
providing a different set of capabilities as well. This change of
information sharing tools exemplifies the level of experimentation
with the role of the information manager. The next table maps the
ICTs used in the two types of exercises.
Table 1. Comparison of ICTs for Information Sharing
Exercise
Primary Function
ROAR COPI
ArcMap and
Event Plotting & GIS Info Sharing CityGIS
FLIWAS
(Voice) Radio Communication C2000 C2000
Documentation & Tracking N/A GMS
Info/Situation Report Sharing CCS Groove CEDRIC
Evacuation GMS
DSS / Modeling calculator (Resource
(Simulation) allocation)
The table gives a cross case view of information systems used
during the exercises. The next section proceeds with an
elaboration of the research instruments that we employed for
examining the field studies.
3. METHODOLOGY
The current case study follows a qualitative research approach, in
which we collected data using field research techniques, such as
observations, interviews, and open-ended surveys. The fieldwork
is part of a longitudinal research on information management and
information quality in extreme environments such as multi-
agency emergency management. For the field research, we used
three main research instruments: interviews, observations and
document/archival analysis. The use of these different data
collection instruments allowed us to triangulate a more complete
and valid understanding of the cases under investigation. The
research instruments and the way in which they were utilized are
discussed in detail in the subsequent sections.
3.1 Interviews
Prior to the MAER exercises, we interviewed a number of
information architects (5 for ROAR and 15 for COPI) on the
information sharing processes, roles, and capabilities to ensure
information quality. The goal of the interviews was to understand
the information architecture that is needed to facilitate
information sharing and coordination, what the information
quality and system quality requirements are that they consider to
be important, and how they addressed these requirements.
Before the interviews, a summary of this research and a list of
questions for the interview was emailed to each of the
respondents, thus ensuring that all interviews followed the same
general format, and that all participants could provide more
 The Proceedings of the 10th International Digital Government Research Conference
informative responses. The interviews were conducted at the
exercise locations and were tape recorded in order to capture as
much data as possible. The one and a half hour interviews were
semi-structured and pre-tested with three experts. After each
interview, we returned an interview transcript to each respondent
in order to validate our conclusions. For the analysis of the
interview findings, a qualitative approach to data analysis was
adopted. Researchers have suggested that, when using a
qualitative approach, a set of initial seed categories may be
generated to guide the research [11]. The seeds and related
questions used for the interviews are presented in the next table.
Table 2. Interview protocol
Seed Categories Illustrative questions
Organizational How are information related roles and
level responsibilities organized during response?
Which kinds of information systems are used
Technical level for information sharing between agencies?
Who operates and manages these systems?
Which of the information quality requirements
(availability, timeliness, correctness, amount
Information and relevancy) are important in your
quality information architecture strategy? Which
measures do you use to meet these
requirements? What are the priorities?
Which of the system quality requirements
(accessibility, response time, flexibility,
interoperability, and reliability) are important
System quality
in your information architecture strategy?
Which measures do you use to meet these
requirements? What are the priorities?
To compare the results of the various interviews, we used
ATLAS.ti, a text analysis application. ATLAS.ti can be classified
as a qualitative text analysis application [9], which fits the results
of the conducted semi-structured interviews with the in-the-field
experts.
3.2 Observations
After the interviews, we observed multiple exercises (8 COPI and
3 ROAR) based on an observation protocol constructed for
studying the information sharing process, roles, capabilities and
information/system quality issues. We pre-tested the observation
protocol in previous field observations (blind citation for
anonymity). The following table lists some sample items in our
interview and observation protocols.
Table 3. Sample Items in Data Collection Protocols
Profile of the CoPI leaders
The # of real GRIP 1 or higher experience
Interaction with Information Manager (1-7)
Verifies information with the team members (Yes/No)
Info writing on whiteboard (1-7)
Use of previous information on whiteboard (1-7)
Leadership style (proactive/reactive)
Categorizes information on whiteboard (Y/N)
Focus on pushing vs. pulling information (1-7)
Profile of the Information Managers (IM)
# exercises experienced - # of real grip 1 or higher experienced
Interaction with COPI leader (1-7)
280
Verifies information with the team members (Yes/No)
Info writing in CEDRIC (1-7)
Use of previous information on CEDRIC (1-7)
Information management style (proactive/reactive)
Categorizes information in situation reports (Y/N)
Focus on pushing vs. pulling information (1-7)
DCMR
GHOR
Police
Other
Mun.
RPA
Use ICT
Fire
C2000
Telephone
CityGIS
CEDRIC
CCS/Groove
Questions on information management roles and capabilities
Were any info management responsibilities predefined?
Was the InfoQual checked/monitored?
Did anyone buffer/filter out essential info?
Was there a library for essential info?
Was anticipated information collected in advance?
Was there an expert panel? Were experts consulted?
Was human capacity reserved for the collection, evaluation and
distribution of info?
Did someone monitor who had essential info and who did not?
Was info related task prioritized in time?
Was info from different sources compared?
Were new info sources accessed for emerging info needs?
Were situation reports used by everyone?
The observation protocol presented in table 3 was used during
both the COPI and the ROAR exercises. The next section
discusses the findings of the interviews and the observations.
4. FINDINGS
4.1 Findings from Interviews
The interviews reveal how various information architects from
different agencies have different opinions and knowledge on
several information quality requirements and measures.
Generally, the information architects felt that creating semantic
and syntactic interoperability across agency databases was a
current priority, whereas information quality was a future
concern. Moreover, information quality is a difficult concept to
measure from the information architects perspective, and it is
therefore difficult to decide on the measures and arrangements for
dealing with information quality issues.
As a result, much work is being done on the development of
information systems that can be used by different agencies and by
agencies on the German side. A prototype of such a system co-
developed and tested by Dutch and German water management
agencies is FLIWAS. In essence, this is an area/flood plotting
system with mailing, messaging and document storage
capabilities, supporting both the Dutch and German languages.
The respondents were quite optimistic about FLIWAS and
anticipated that its value would be apparent after the drills. They
also called for more information systems development and testing
according to the FLIWAS project.
 The Proceedings of the 10th International Digital Government Research Conference
Almost all of the respondents recognized two important positions
for information management on the strategic and tactical
echelons: the information manager and the plotter. In the current
information architecture of both field cases, multiple information
managers (IM) and plotters (a.k.a. situation visualizers) are
defined to assist decision-making units. Both roles are enabled via
information technology capabilities such as messaging and
visualization. Information managers are expected to ensure
information quality for relief workers. Usually, the role of the
information manager was played by a police official on both the
tactical and strategic echelons. This information manager should
act as a boundary spanner between agencies and reduce the gap
between information demand and supply for key information
needs. While there is no consensus on the existence and the
fulfillment of the roles of the information manager, most experts
do agree though that an information manager will be increasingly
important in the future. The respondents agreed that currently,
information is shared according to a predefined authority
structure, which is too hierarchical to address emerging
information quality issues. In the collective information
architecture during response, the agency specific control rooms
have a crucial role in the intra-agency information sharing and
coordination process, but are limited in its capabilities to assure
information quality across agency boundaries. Some respondents
suggested collocation of the multiple emergency rooms, such as
the case in Rotterdam. Currently, Rotterdam is one of the few
regions in the Netherlands, which has a collocated control room,
which means that the control rooms of the police, fire brigade,
and ambulance services are physically located in the same office.
Three respondents suggested allocating an information manager
to the collocated emergency control rooms, because much
information passes through this multi-disciplinary unit. Five
respondents mentioned that they are currently focusing on
extending the capabilities of the plotter with enrichment
capabilities (e.g. dynamic display of the number of first
responders in the disaster area).
4.2 Findings from Observations
Our observation shows that information sharing is a complex,
unstructured process employing multiple channels (voice, text and
visual) and human actors’ interventions. Moreover, the roles and
capabilities regarding information sharing and coordination are
designed for hierarchical operations and are non-adaptive to
situational needs. During the observations, we observed various
levels of importance of the information manager and the situation
plotter role. Generally, we observed that both roles are not very
institutionalized in the decision-making units, which means that
the other relief workers generally consider these roles as passive
black boxes in the decision-making process. We also observed
that commanders in the decision-making unit did not even know
the capabilities and responsibilities of the information manager.
For example, we observed some commanders who needed to
contact their subordinates in the field obtained the telephone
numbers by contacting the emergency room. This usually took
more than a few minutes as every call to the emergency room was
queued and not prioritized. Information managers were generally
concerned with writing a situation report based on the
interpretation of the situation as discussed during each decision-
making round. Each decision-making round is led by a chair
(leader of the unit) who pulls and prioritizes information from the
commander of the various relief agencies. We identified two
281
approaches for the information pulling: agency based (e.g. in case
of a fire, the commander of the fire department is questioned first)
versus event/priority based (e.g. who knows something about the
victims in the area?). We noted that less experienced information
managers fully dedicate their attention to listening and typing,
focusing on capturing information from the information sharing
process, which is led by the chair of the decision-making unit. On
the other hand, the more experienced information managers are
more actively involved in the information sharing process and ask
exploratory, explanatory and confirmatory questions while
information is being shared. For instance, one information
manager pointed out conflicting numbers on the death toll,
requiring the commanders of the police and the fire department to
recheck their sources. In this way, the information manager also
acted as an information quality monitor. We found that at least
twice, the information manager was frustrated by having to
generate each situation report repeatedly and not being able to
update changes in earlier reports. The reporting software used did
not provide capability to label information as new or updated, for
instance by bolding or highlighting information in previous
situation reports. Furthermore, the fact that the situation reporting
software they used was a thin client internet application, and it
frequently failed when the wireless internet connection was lost.
These failures frustrated them, as they had to retype a new
document and did not know which information was the most
current information. A workaround used for this is typing the
situation report in Microsoft Word and copy pasting the text in the
online situation reporting software.
A water board official played the role of plotter during the drills.
The plotters were usually outside the decision-making unit and
functioned as low control (close to the incident). Agencies used
two different versions of plotting software, which often resulted in
different plots of the flood area. Plotters are expected to aggregate
information into maps, pictures, and figures of the situation and to
share this with the information managers in the decision-making
units. The capabilities the plotter had available were similar for
both cases and comprised of data visualization and map
generating applications. The plotters had the capability to enrich
the plots by adding information on the wind speed and potentially
hazardous areas. The latter capability proved very valuable for a
number of the exercises in Gelderland, while the commanders of
the relief agencies needed to develop a common operational
picture on the area that would be flooded. In Gelderland the
decision-making unit on the strategic level did have two video
projectors which could project plots and situation reports on the
wall. This capability allowed the chair to structure the information
sharing process according to the plots and situational information
and to synchronize the situational awareness of the agency
commanders. In the back office, we observed some problems with
the synchronization of the situation reports on the central
projectors in the room. The reason for this is that the same
information manager who was responsible for situation report
generation in the front office (during the decision-making rounds)
was responsible for updating the situation report on the shared
screen in the back office. Because of time pressure and task-
overload, this information was not changed on the situation report
in the back office. After a while, the agents in the back office did
not look at the screens, as they knew the information that was
displayed was outdated. This lack of capability hampered the
creation of shared awareness in the back office.
 The Proceedings of the 10th International Digital Government Research Conference
5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The current study offers valuable insight into inter-agency
information sharing in large-scale emergency response operations.
Information sharing is an unstructured process using multiple
channels and human actors’ interventions. In both case studies
different systems were used. Information flows in a MAER
situation are largely shaped by the institutionalized (inter-)
organizational structure of the participating relief agencies.
Therefore, information systems for MAER operations should be
conceptualized in a way that the system includes the underlying
political and organizational structure, institutional
rules/operational procedures, norms, and most importantly, the
human actors who interface with ICTs and other people. Our
observation also suggests that the quality of information
perceived by decision-makers can be affected by not only ICT
capability, but also by such human actors (e.g. information
managers).
The ICT development projects in the case studies tend to
emphasize technical solutions for interoperability. In contrast to
this, the exercises show that while technological infrastructure for
interoperability is very important, it should not be considered as a
substitution for information quality (IQ), just because IQ is
difficult to define and measure in the MAER context. IQ is
influenced by a broad range of factors including the way the
information is visualized and presented by the exercise
participants. The case study revealed that many decision-makers
and information managers suffer from lack of information
availability awareness, not just situational awareness. That is, first
responders participating in MAER operations do not know who
has the information that he/she needs, resulting in unnecessary re-
search and re-transmission of information, low reuse rate for
frequently asked information, and duplicated and inconsistent
data. A careful post-exercise assessment and discussion may
improve decision-makers’ understanding of information
availability and the sources of available information. As
information sharing is often unstructured, a centralized
information clearing house/repository coupled with pro-active and
highly capable information orchestrators working as a reference
librarian for decision-makers, and having in-depth expertise in
MAER, might further increase the chance to achieve a higher
MAER performance.
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors appreciate the organizers and participants of the 2008
ROAR (Gelderland) and Rotterdam COPI exercises for their
support and participation in this study.
The research of the 2nd and the last authors has been supported by
NSF under grant # IIS-0809186. Usual disclaimer applies.
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