United We Respond: One Community, One Voice

Connie WhiteStarr Roxanne Hiltz

Murray Turoff

NJIT

Motivation Emergency Situations cross

boarders exceeding local resources Newly formed groups suffer from

Threat Rigidity where pertinent information is lost

Dynamic Delphi can create and sustain a group ‘voice’ for Community of Practice

Overview Responders can consists of local, state,

national and international responders CERT civilian emergency response team Volunteer groups (firefighters, civilians) Delphi Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment

for group consensus End result is ‘collective intelligence’

Community of Practice (CoP) ‘groups of people who share a

concern, a set of problems , or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on a ongoing basis.’

Wenger

Community of Practice ‘House the valuable knowledge and

practice of how things really get done in an organization’

CoP is a natural gathering of individuals who have synergistic effect.

CERT, FEMA civilian corps, military Not hierarchical, but collegiate

collaborative decision-making Utilize Community Response Grid

Collaboration Roles: Human roles built into software Protocols: Processes for establishing

results Structure: Knowledge structures such

as Delphi to organize and provide modeled relationships, provide visualizations, scaling methods, etc.

Dynamic Delphi Member identity is anonymous:

pen names or real names can be used

Anyone can vote or have say on any topic

Votes can be changed based on merits of arguments, new information, etc.

Dynamic Delphi Anyone can participate in any part

of decision model Interaction is Asynchronous Participants don’t have to be co-

located Visual Feedback that is real time

Group Consensus Thurstone’s Law of Comparitive

Judgment Pair-wise comparison breaking down

decisions into atomic unidimensional data

Duress, Sleep Depravation, Multiple Expert Input

Simplifies complex problems Lessens information overload

Information Feedback RealTime

Creates Visual Scale of group opinion Allows individuals to know where

they stand against group opinion Informs others where all stand on

any issue, group opinions, group consensus

Tells where each individual item stands relative to other items

Dynamic Decision Model

Dynamic Decision Making Any idea can be submitted by any

group member anytime on a list Continuous vote on any proposed

item Anyone can vote, change their vote,

choose not to vote or hold vote until more information comes in

Only best solutions are utilized and voted on

Information Overload Reduced

Visual Feedback

Financial Recovery Cost

Casualties and Fatalities

Utilities Impact

Potential To Spread

Ability of Local Response Adequacy

Time Needed for Response

Infrastructure DamageResources for Aid/Containment

Loss of Command and Control

Duration of Disaster

Public Reaction

Geographic Impact

Time to Return to Normalcy

Chance of Imminent Reoccurrence

Financial Loss

Tim

e

Siz

e

Ser

vice

Monet

ary

Sca

le o

f Im

portan

ce o

f Wel

fare

of P

ublic

Visual Feedback Interpretation Indication of strong areas of

agreement or disagreement Shows clusters of items indicating

perceived equivalences based on some dimension

Give a rank order of items on semantic differential where rank is relative

Expectations? More experts produce collective

intelligence Flexible decision model reflecting

human mind Reduction in Information Overload

and complexity in decision-making Better decisions, better outcomes Flexible Environment

Future Research Build and test system on

emergency responders Open Source software to reduce

cost and increase usability – digital divide

Domain is non-specific and can be used in many situations

Any Questions, Comments, Critiques, or Criticisms?

Thank you!

Connie, Roxanne, Murray