The Cross-Impact of Murray Turoff on Information Systems for Crisis Response

and Management

Bartel Van de WalleDepartment of Information Systems and ManagementTilburg UniversityThe Netherlands

• Visiting researcher at NJIT Collaborative Systems Lab 1996-1997

• Faculty Member CIS (and later IS) Department 2000 – 2003

• Really started working with Murray AFTER return to Europe

• Started ISCRAM in 2004

• ISCRAM06 conference at NJIT in May 2006

• Papers, chapters, special issues, book, sessions, mini-tracks, …

COLLABORATIVE HISTORY

• GDSS and DGSS

• CMC

• Voting and Arrow’s paradox (“social choice and individual values”)

• Collaborative Hypertext

WHY COLAB?

Most Influential Papers - for me:

M. Turoff, "Computer-mediated communication requirements for group support", Journal of Organizational Computing 1, 85--113, (1991).

S.R. Hiltz, K. Johnson, and M. Turoff, "Experiments in group decision making: communication process and outcome in face-to-face versus computerized conferences", Human Communications Research 13 (2), 225--252, (1986).

Rao and Turoff paper on Collaborative Hypertext, 1990

AfterBefore

ISCRAM Community Cumulative Membership

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

May-04 Jul-04 Sep-04 Nov-04 Jan-05 Mar-05 May-05 Jul-05 Sep-05 Nov-05 Jan-06 Mar-06 May-06

Cumulative Membership

370 320

45

20

Special Section in Communications of the ACM, March 2007

Special Section in Communications of the ACM, March 2007

Special Section in Communications of the ACM, March 2007

Traditional Systems

• Tend to be top down

• Follow designs done for single agencies or organizations

• Somewhat bureaucratic

• Assume largely verbal interaction

• Pre-segments groups to “manageable” size

• Tend to encourage rule following and often promotes rigidity

• Can work for single homogenous group

ISCRAM SYSTEMS

• Heterogeneous very large communities

• Allow group formation to be dynamic

• Allow for quick delegation of authority by role assignment

• Provide for timely oversight and accountability

• Encourage flexibility of response

• Encourage strong personal ties among responders and resulting cohesive groups

• Provide support for all phases of the emergency response process as well as everyday use for other regular functions

• Use ISCRAM for virtual communities and people will be trained to join given the right emergency situation

• Allow communities to build a knowledge system in their area

• In organizations employ ISCRAM for all teams and committees dealing with problems that cut across the organization

Example Future Research: Virtual teams and communities

• Change and disruption is more common than we think, even in commerce, and getting more frequent

• The technology exists to do it

• However, does the organizational motivation and understanding exists to do it?

Observations:

The issue is designing new virtual organizations and communities

that will change existing organizations and the way things

are done

What shall we call it…

Bayes

Markov

Turoff

Bayesian

Markovian

Turovian

The issue is designing new virtual organizations and communities

that will change existing organizations and the way things are done

Turovian View on ISCRAM

ISCRAM New Developments

ISCRAM New Developments

Example: Tilburg Univ. Students in 2005:

Disaster Recovery projects in Sri Lanka

ISCRAM Students “without borders”

Soooo.... a lot of serious work ahead of us Murray!

Let’s enjoy it!