Tania RandallDefence R&D Canada – Atlantic

October 2010

An Analysis of Tool Usage and Requirementsfor a Team of Emergency Planners, Managers and Responders

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Maritime Command and Control (C2) Concept and Development (MC2CD) Group

• Among many things, we:

– study the command and control of operations centers

– look for potential improvements

– demonstrate or validate our ideas through experimentation

– make recommendations based on results

• Understanding the procedures and tools currently used by emergency teams can help us assess where changes may be of greatest value

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My Interests & Beliefs

• Software tools for emergency operations centers and emergency response

• Ease of use of these tools

• Identifying gaps between user requirements and current technologies or capabilities

• I believe in:

– Keeping it simple

– Knowing the user

– Not adding new tools when current ones are sufficient

– Finding new ways to use existing tools better

– Using simulation and/or experimentation to prove/disprove the benefits of new technology prior to real-world use

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How can we learn about the end user?

• Observe them

• Interview them

• Become them

• Take advantage of an existing exercise and survey participants!!!

EXERCISE RISING WATERS 2010EXERCISE RISING WATERS 2010

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The Rising Waters Exercise

• Joint Task Force Atlantic (JTFA) tabletop exercise with NB EMO

• Scenario involved military response to St John River flooding

• Participants included:

– All those involved in a flooding incident (senior leaders and managers, operations center staff, etc.)

• Survey administered online, prior to exercise; a total of 20 survey responses came from:

– JTFA, Land Forces Atlantic Area (LFAA), Formation Logistics (CFB Halifax)

– NB EMO, Public Safety Canada (PS)

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Survey Overview

• Focused on three elements of emergency operations:

– tools for communication,

– required tasks, and

– tools for information capturing.

• Also asked for identification of specific product/tool names for cross-comparison across participants

• For all rated questions, the following scale applied:

– 1=very low, 2=low, 3=moderate, 4=high, and 5=very high

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Survey – Communication Tools

• Survey participants were asked to indicate (on a scale of 1 to 5) their likelihood of using the following tools for communication during an emergency:

– Radio (VHF/TMR)

– Phone (LAN/Mobile)

– E-mail, fax, chat

– a teleconference, a web conference

– a shared workspace, a Virtual Social Networking (VSN) tool

– an Incident Management System (IMS)

– a Situational Awareness Tool

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Communications Tools (Results & Observations)

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Survey – Emergency-Related Tasks

• Survey participants were asked to indicate (on a scale of 1 to 5) their likelihood of needing to do the following during an emergency:

– send a file attachment

– share textual information

– record information (from their own organization or another organization)

– repeat information to more than one person

– provide information to non-responders

– access information on a mobile device

– keep an audit trail with all details of the incident response

– look up a Standard Operating Procedure

– monitor resources

– perform an internet search

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Emergency-Related Tasks (Results & Observations)

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Survey - Logging

• Survey participants were asked to indicate (on a scale of 1 to 5) their likelihood of using the following to keep track of incident details during an emergency response:

– Microsoft Word/Excel/PowerPoint

– an old-fashioned white board or flip chart, an electronic/shareable white board

– a pen/pencil and paper

– a paper map, a digital map

– a wiki page

– a mobile phone (to record notes or voice memos)

– an Incident Management System

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Logging (Results & Observations)

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Participant Tool Comparison

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For Further Discussion

• Use of paper maps (~70%) and electronic maps (~80%)

• Use of VSNs for Emergency Management (ranked lowest, <25%)

• IMS functionality is very much required, however IMS system use is low for DND

• Mobile phones (not surprisingly) ranked 3rd most likely to be used

– Which applications are likely to be of greatest use to emergency responders?

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Paper Maps vs Electronic Maps

• Paper:

– Pros:

• Inexpensive, light, any size, easy to store, easy to become familiar with, require no power

• Allow people to stand around a table, visualize what/where things are happening, and discuss issues encourages collaboration

– Cons: Fixed amount of detail, requires light

• Electronic maps:

– Pros: Digital overlays available, easy to obtain, can mark on them without permanently defacing the original map, can be shared electronically

– Cons: Show less of an area at once, require some technical intuition, not as portable, can be expensive, are best-suited for one or a limited number of viewers at a time

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DRDC/Univ. of Waterloo Project: Tabletop Computing

• While this technology is still much in its infancy, it could have future impact on the design of operations rooms.

• While this technology is still much in its infancy, it could have future impact on the design of operations rooms.

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Virtual Social Networking

• As of Sept 2010, there were 17 million Facebook users in Canada

• Facebook has huge potential for communicating with the public

• Facebook gives the public an opportunity to document what they know and to talk to others about it

• As of June 2010, Twitter had 190M users worldwide, tweeting 65M times a day

• For emergency planning stages, Facebook or similar tools could be used by managers and responders to familiarize themselves with each other, share ideas, etc.

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DRDC Project: VSN for Military Interoperability

• Investigating ways the Canadian Forces can use virtual social networking (VSN):

– Share experiences, build relationships

– Locate and share expertise

– Inherit social network connections from your predecessor, to ease transition to a new job

• 3-year project (ending in 2012) will:

– identify requirements for a CF VSN tool,

– develop a prototype or purchase a solution,

– run experiments to measure potential effects of VSN, and

– trial system in a ‘pilot’ community.

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IMS Capabilities vs IMS Systems

• Why IMS systems are not in greater use:– lack of awareness– confusion over which one is best/appropriate– no system appears to fit our ‘mental model’– concerns about interoperability– concerns about training requirements and ease of use– cost, procurement processes/efforts– belief that “we can already do all those things”

• Benefits of IMS system vs existing collection of tools:– keeps all the information and logs in one place– multiple users can modify/enhance the same incident – web-based so it’s easy to access (no installation)– easy report generation, including ICS forms– …

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DRDC Project: IMS System Usability

• Reviewed ~10 IMS Systems, 4 in great detail

• Identified 4 core tasks common to each IMS system

• Wrote experimental plan to study the usability of each of these systems

• Have room set up and ready to go

• Will run 24 people through 4 systems

– Survey after each task, and end of each system

– Time to complete task, and clicks to complete task

– Screen capture of each system for further analysis

• Returning product-specific results to the companies

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The Wonders of a Handheld Mobile Device

• Surveyed participants indicated a very high likelihood of using a mobile phone/device during an emergency

• Available applications are practically endless, and if you can’t find what you need, you can just have someone develop it!

• Here are few applications/capabilities you might not know about:

– Push-to-talk applications

– Tether cell phone internet to a laptop

– GPS ‘Friend’ tracking apps

– Route logging apps with photos

– Augmented reality apps

– Streaming video from phone

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Final Thoughts

• Survey suggests, during emergencies we:

– communicate with e-mail, phones, mobile devices

– are very likely to perform tasks handled by IMS systems, yet use of such systems is not that high (overall)

– are more likely to use Office tools than specific emergency management tools (DND)

• The future may find:

– a greater focus on digital maps

– increased use of easy to use Incident Management Systems

– increased use of virtual social networks

– increased use of mobile technologies and applications

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