Supporting Humanitarian Relief Logistics ... - GeoVISTA Center
Supporting Humanitarian Relief Logistics Operations through Online Geocollaborative Knowledge Management Brian M. Tomaszewski, Alan M. MacEachren, Scott Pezanowski, Xiaoyan Liu, and Ian Turton Department of Geography and GeoVISTA Center The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802 (1+) 814-865-4448 {bmt139, maceachren, spezanowski, xiaoyan, ijt1} @psu.edu
ABSTRACT Over the past two years, horrific disasters such as the Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the Pakistan Earthquake have demonstrated the critical need for effective technological infrastructure that is scientifically grounded in geo-visual group interaction theory [1] and humanitarian knowledge management procedures [2] to quickly and effectively facilitate planning for predictable events and post-event response. In this demonstration, we address specific issues that negatively impact the effectiveness of geocollaborative process in disaster relief. These include lack of common group operating picture, lack of command structure understanding and blatant miscommunication and misunderstanding about where relief supplies needed to be delivered, who will deliver them, when they need to be delivered, and the relevancy of deliveries to stricken areas. Our approach improves on existing systems by using methods and technologies that meet the challenges of coordinating the efforts of diverse and spatially distributed private, public, and governmental agencies throughout the world responding to disasters. This is accomplished by applying new forms of distributed geospatial data, technology, and collaboration functionality. We present our progress on the development of the Geocollaborative Web Portal (GWP), an asynchronous, open source geospatial information framework designed to support international group interaction and knowledge management in the context of humanitarian relief logistics.
Geocollaboration, Asynchronous Group Work, Logistics, Humanitarian Relief, Open Source GIS, Web Portal, Dynamic Web Map Services (WMS)/Web Feature Services (WFS) Integration, Concept Maps
1. INTRODUCTION
H.5.3 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Group and Organization Interfaces – Asynchronous interaction, Collaborative computing, Computer-supported cooperative work, Web-based interaction.
The Geocollaborative Web Portal (GWP) application (Figure 1) is designed to provide a common and intuitive interface through which asynchronous, geocollaborative activities can be conducted in support of humanitarian relief logistics operations. The GWP extends the core goals of the GeoCollaborative Crisis Management (GCCM) project [3, this volume]. It does so by providing specific functionality and tools within a web-based environment that support situation assessment, positioning and monitoring of field-teams and distribution sites, and supply routing. Special emphasis is placed on supporting international group interaction through collaborative annotation and visualization procedures, support for awareness of group interactions, multi-lingual map feature labeling, and organizationspecific symbol sets to overcome communication barriers. In addition to facilitating asynchronous group interaction, the GWP enhances group knowledge development through the ability to integrate external WMS and WFS geospatial resources into the portal, access and author concept maps that represent operational rules and command structures in intuitive ways, store and retrieve file-based data resources such as site-imagery and documents, and monitor real-time RSS and GeoRSS feeds of situation-relevant information such as news and weather reports. While there has been independent research on most of these capabilities in other contexts, they have not (to our knowledge) been integrated previously within web-map / web-feature services, nor are they present in existing disaster systems.
General Terms
2. ONLINE GEOCOLLABORATION
Categories and Subject Descriptors
Management, Design, Experimentation, Human Factors
Keywords Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. The National Conference on Digital Government Research, dg.o2006, May 21–25, 2006, San Diego, CA, USA. Copyright 2006 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0004…$5.00.
In our demonstration, we will focus on three components of online, map-based collaboration. The first of these is the concept of a map session where multiple users interact via a common web map space over an extended period of time. The map within the GWP uses the open-source MapBuilder API and JetSpeed Portal engine. These open frameworks have allowed our research team to develop scalable functionality and interface elements that can easily accommodate dynamic collaborative processes such as quickly adding or removing collaborators, tools and functionality as the situation dictates. Single user and subsequent group interaction is managed and persisted by GWP functionality. As
we will demonstrate, users have the option to be online at the same time interacting in near real time, and they can leave and return to sessions as needed, interacting asynchronously. GWP functionality tracks and records user map interactions such as panning, zooming, map extent, and annotation, and allows users to see what map actions others users have done, and where they have gone in both map space real world position (the latter through display of GPS tracks). This provides users of the application group with perceptual anchoring of actions taken by other users. Second, we will demonstrate the suite of tools that are available to individual users in the GWP. These tools allow users to input a diverse range of geospatial data into the portal and subsequently share it with other collaborators using a variety of methods. Capabilities include real-time address geocoding, GPX point and track parsing and rendering, geospatial image overlays, and dynamic WMS/WFS data source integration. In this portion of the demonstration, we will show how our underlying visualization and annotation procedures supplement data additions for an international audience through multi-lingual map feature labeling, and organization-specific symbol sets, and work toward overcoming issues of communication and understanding. Third, we will demonstrate the GWP’s ability to integrate work with concept maps as well as with geographic maps. We are using concept maps to help collaborators structure knowledge about relief logistics procedures, understand how responsibilities and procedures for different organizations in a relief effort relate (or should relate), and identify tools and data relevant to specific situations.
NeoCITIES [4] emergency management simulation application to develop group bench-mark performance measures. Sample Relief Logistics Scenario: A massive Tsunami strikes a heavily populated, island city located in the Pacific rim. The city had 6 hours to prepare for the impact. The broad effects of this include the disabling of military, government and civilian institutions and subsequent effects on transportation and communication structures. Civilians are evacuated to different parts of the island, and main sea and air ports of entry to the island are damaged, along with the island’s main highway. As the situation unfolds, the GWP is used as a central online location for information sharing and reporting by all parties involved in responding to the situation, and to coordinate the development of the response logistics supply chain. GWP functionality also allows for temporally and spatially tracking situational urgency at various locations (lack of food, medical supplies), coordinating efficient and relevant resource allocation, enabling relocation of groups participating in the response as the situation develops, and identifying issues that arise from having a hierarchy of groups interacting with differing institutional perspectives (for example, a government agency won’t share information with an NGO). Concept maps, organization-specific symbol sets, shared map annotation, external information feeds, and multi-language tools facilitate this collaboration in an international arena. This scenario demonstrates how geocollaborative technologies, coupled with effective, intuitive information sharing can bridge potential language and cultural constraints between team members and lead to coordinated perspectives through the construction of team knowledge that can overcome issues inherent in disaster response collaboration.
4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work is supported by NSF Digital Government Research program under grant no. NSF-EIA-0306845. We acknowledge contributions from other team members, namely Marc Friedenberg, Joaquin Obieta and Adrian Cox.
5. REFERENCES [1] MacEachren, A. M. Moving geovisualization toward support for group work. In J. Dykes & A. M.MacEachren & M.-J. Kraak (Eds.), Exploring Geovisualization. Amsterdam: Elsevier. (2005). pp. 445-461 [2] King, Dennis. Humanitarian Knowledge Management. Proceedings of the Second International ISCRAM Conference. Brussels, Belgium. (2005). pp. 1-6 Figure 1. GWP Architecture Overview
3. APPLICATION SCENARIO We demonstrate the utility of the GWP using a crisis scenario that illustrates how groups can collaborate to facilitate humanitarian relief logistics operations. This scenario demonstrates the myriad of geospatial, temporal, conceptual, and contextual issues and variables involved with international collaboration for disaster response, and how the GWP can overcome them. In order to determine the effectiveness of the GWP in relation to user interaction performance, we integrated the GWP with the
[3] MacEachren, A. M., McNeese, M., Cai, G., Fuhrmann, S., & Sharma, R. in press, Project Highlight: GeoCollaborative Crisis Management. 7th Annual National Conference on Digital Government Research, San Diego, CA, May 21-24, (2006). [4] Michael D. McNeese, Priya Bains, Isaac Brewer, Cliff Brown, Erik S. Connors, Tyrone Jefferson, Jr., Rashaad E.T. Jones, and Ivanna Terrell. The Neocities Simulation: Understanding The Design And Experimental Methodology Used To Develop A Team Emergency Management Simulation. 49th Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Conference, Orlando. (2005).
ABSTRACT Over the past two years, horrific disasters such as the Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the Pakistan Earthquake have demonstrated the critical need for effective technological infrastructure that is scientifically grounded in geo-visual group interaction theory [1] and humanitarian knowledge management procedures [2] to quickly and effectively facilitate planning for predictable events and post-event response. In this demonstration, we address specific issues that negatively impact the effectiveness of geocollaborative process in disaster relief. These include lack of common group operating picture, lack of command structure understanding and blatant miscommunication and misunderstanding about where relief supplies needed to be delivered, who will deliver them, when they need to be delivered, and the relevancy of deliveries to stricken areas. Our approach improves on existing systems by using methods and technologies that meet the challenges of coordinating the efforts of diverse and spatially distributed private, public, and governmental agencies throughout the world responding to disasters. This is accomplished by applying new forms of distributed geospatial data, technology, and collaboration functionality. We present our progress on the development of the Geocollaborative Web Portal (GWP), an asynchronous, open source geospatial information framework designed to support international group interaction and knowledge management in the context of humanitarian relief logistics.
Geocollaboration, Asynchronous Group Work, Logistics, Humanitarian Relief, Open Source GIS, Web Portal, Dynamic Web Map Services (WMS)/Web Feature Services (WFS) Integration, Concept Maps
1. INTRODUCTION
H.5.3 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Group and Organization Interfaces – Asynchronous interaction, Collaborative computing, Computer-supported cooperative work, Web-based interaction.
The Geocollaborative Web Portal (GWP) application (Figure 1) is designed to provide a common and intuitive interface through which asynchronous, geocollaborative activities can be conducted in support of humanitarian relief logistics operations. The GWP extends the core goals of the GeoCollaborative Crisis Management (GCCM) project [3, this volume]. It does so by providing specific functionality and tools within a web-based environment that support situation assessment, positioning and monitoring of field-teams and distribution sites, and supply routing. Special emphasis is placed on supporting international group interaction through collaborative annotation and visualization procedures, support for awareness of group interactions, multi-lingual map feature labeling, and organizationspecific symbol sets to overcome communication barriers. In addition to facilitating asynchronous group interaction, the GWP enhances group knowledge development through the ability to integrate external WMS and WFS geospatial resources into the portal, access and author concept maps that represent operational rules and command structures in intuitive ways, store and retrieve file-based data resources such as site-imagery and documents, and monitor real-time RSS and GeoRSS feeds of situation-relevant information such as news and weather reports. While there has been independent research on most of these capabilities in other contexts, they have not (to our knowledge) been integrated previously within web-map / web-feature services, nor are they present in existing disaster systems.
General Terms
2. ONLINE GEOCOLLABORATION
Categories and Subject Descriptors
Management, Design, Experimentation, Human Factors
Keywords Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. The National Conference on Digital Government Research, dg.o2006, May 21–25, 2006, San Diego, CA, USA. Copyright 2006 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0004…$5.00.
In our demonstration, we will focus on three components of online, map-based collaboration. The first of these is the concept of a map session where multiple users interact via a common web map space over an extended period of time. The map within the GWP uses the open-source MapBuilder API and JetSpeed Portal engine. These open frameworks have allowed our research team to develop scalable functionality and interface elements that can easily accommodate dynamic collaborative processes such as quickly adding or removing collaborators, tools and functionality as the situation dictates. Single user and subsequent group interaction is managed and persisted by GWP functionality. As
we will demonstrate, users have the option to be online at the same time interacting in near real time, and they can leave and return to sessions as needed, interacting asynchronously. GWP functionality tracks and records user map interactions such as panning, zooming, map extent, and annotation, and allows users to see what map actions others users have done, and where they have gone in both map space real world position (the latter through display of GPS tracks). This provides users of the application group with perceptual anchoring of actions taken by other users. Second, we will demonstrate the suite of tools that are available to individual users in the GWP. These tools allow users to input a diverse range of geospatial data into the portal and subsequently share it with other collaborators using a variety of methods. Capabilities include real-time address geocoding, GPX point and track parsing and rendering, geospatial image overlays, and dynamic WMS/WFS data source integration. In this portion of the demonstration, we will show how our underlying visualization and annotation procedures supplement data additions for an international audience through multi-lingual map feature labeling, and organization-specific symbol sets, and work toward overcoming issues of communication and understanding. Third, we will demonstrate the GWP’s ability to integrate work with concept maps as well as with geographic maps. We are using concept maps to help collaborators structure knowledge about relief logistics procedures, understand how responsibilities and procedures for different organizations in a relief effort relate (or should relate), and identify tools and data relevant to specific situations.
NeoCITIES [4] emergency management simulation application to develop group bench-mark performance measures. Sample Relief Logistics Scenario: A massive Tsunami strikes a heavily populated, island city located in the Pacific rim. The city had 6 hours to prepare for the impact. The broad effects of this include the disabling of military, government and civilian institutions and subsequent effects on transportation and communication structures. Civilians are evacuated to different parts of the island, and main sea and air ports of entry to the island are damaged, along with the island’s main highway. As the situation unfolds, the GWP is used as a central online location for information sharing and reporting by all parties involved in responding to the situation, and to coordinate the development of the response logistics supply chain. GWP functionality also allows for temporally and spatially tracking situational urgency at various locations (lack of food, medical supplies), coordinating efficient and relevant resource allocation, enabling relocation of groups participating in the response as the situation develops, and identifying issues that arise from having a hierarchy of groups interacting with differing institutional perspectives (for example, a government agency won’t share information with an NGO). Concept maps, organization-specific symbol sets, shared map annotation, external information feeds, and multi-language tools facilitate this collaboration in an international arena. This scenario demonstrates how geocollaborative technologies, coupled with effective, intuitive information sharing can bridge potential language and cultural constraints between team members and lead to coordinated perspectives through the construction of team knowledge that can overcome issues inherent in disaster response collaboration.
4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work is supported by NSF Digital Government Research program under grant no. NSF-EIA-0306845. We acknowledge contributions from other team members, namely Marc Friedenberg, Joaquin Obieta and Adrian Cox.
5. REFERENCES [1] MacEachren, A. M. Moving geovisualization toward support for group work. In J. Dykes & A. M.MacEachren & M.-J. Kraak (Eds.), Exploring Geovisualization. Amsterdam: Elsevier. (2005). pp. 445-461 [2] King, Dennis. Humanitarian Knowledge Management. Proceedings of the Second International ISCRAM Conference. Brussels, Belgium. (2005). pp. 1-6 Figure 1. GWP Architecture Overview
3. APPLICATION SCENARIO We demonstrate the utility of the GWP using a crisis scenario that illustrates how groups can collaborate to facilitate humanitarian relief logistics operations. This scenario demonstrates the myriad of geospatial, temporal, conceptual, and contextual issues and variables involved with international collaboration for disaster response, and how the GWP can overcome them. In order to determine the effectiveness of the GWP in relation to user interaction performance, we integrated the GWP with the
[3] MacEachren, A. M., McNeese, M., Cai, G., Fuhrmann, S., & Sharma, R. in press, Project Highlight: GeoCollaborative Crisis Management. 7th Annual National Conference on Digital Government Research, San Diego, CA, May 21-24, (2006). [4] Michael D. McNeese, Priya Bains, Isaac Brewer, Cliff Brown, Erik S. Connors, Tyrone Jefferson, Jr., Rashaad E.T. Jones, and Ivanna Terrell. The Neocities Simulation: Understanding The Design And Experimental Methodology Used To Develop A Team Emergency Management Simulation. 49th Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Conference, Orlando. (2005).
