GCCM: Map-mediated Collaboration among Emergency Operation Centers and Mobile Teams

Managing crises requires collecting geographical intelligence and making spatial decisions through collaborative efforts among multiple agencies and task forces. Typically, one or more emergency operation centers (EOCs) work in cooperation with teams of field responders through communication of the situation and coordination of actions. In such collaborative processes, maps, when shared, can be an ideal media to facilitate the construction of team knowledge, and coordinate perspectives, as maps encourage efficient communication of knowledge, perceptions, judgment, and actions. Paper or electronic maps have been used in collaborative work environments. Unfortunately, current geographical information technologies are not designed for use by such collaborative applications. They were used mainly by technical experts in single user environment where desktop GUI interfaces are the norm. Among many impediments for wider use of GIS in crisis management (as identified in the literature (Zerger and Smith 2003)), the lack of support for same-time, different-place collaboration is a fundamental one.