GeoCollaborative Crisis Management: Using Maps to Mediate EOC-Mobile Team Collaboration

Managing large scale and distributed crisis events is a national priority; and it is a priority that presents information technology challenges to the responsible government agencies. Geographical information systems (with their ability to map out evolving crisis events, affected human and infrastructure assets, as well as actions taken and resources applied) have been indispensable in all stages of crisis management. Their use, however, has been mostly confined to single users within single agencies. The potential for maps and related geospatial technologies to be the media for collaborative activities among distributed agencies and teams have been discussed [1-4], but feasible technological infrastructure and tools are not yet available. An interdisciplinary team from Penn State University (comprised of GIScientists, information Scientists and computer scientists), currently funded by the NSF/DG program, have joined efforts with collaborators from federal, state, and local agencies to develop an approach to and technology to support “GeoCollaborative Crisis Management” (NSFEIA-0306845). The dual goals of this project are: (1) to understand the roles of geographical information distributed crisis management activities; and (2) to develop enabling geospatial information technologies and human-computer systems to facilitate geocollaborative crisis management. This demonstration presents initial progress towards supporting geocollaborative activities, focusing on one type of collaboration involving crisis managers in the field coordinating with those in an emergency operation center (EOC).