Communicating With Citizens on the Ground

Abstract

Availability and access to information is critical for a highly effective response to an ongoing event however, information reported by citizens is based on their context, bias and subjective interpretation, and the channel of communication may be too narrow to provide clear, accurate reporting. This can often lead to inadequate response to an emergency, which can in turn result in loss of property or even lives. Excessive response to an emergency can also result in a waste of highly resources. The authors' solution to address this problem is to make the citizen act as a camera for the control room by exploiting the user's mobile camera. The system is designed to provide a live view of the citizen's immediate surroundings, while control room personnel can provide instructions. In this paper, the authors introduce their approach and share initial insights from a focus group validation session and then four evaluations with users within a separate but closely related domain. They discuss their observations, evaluation results and provide a set of recommendations for the Emergency Response domain.

Remote Home Visit: Exploring the feasibility, acceptability and potential benefits of using digital technology to undertake occupational therapy home assessments

“…However, most users highlighted the potential need for the presence of technical support. While we only highlight some of the findings of our user studies here (for brevity and avoiding repetition), we discuss our findings and the user evaluations in more detail in Mazumdar et al. (2017).…”

“…Communication between the trusted visitor and occupational therapists was maintained with accurate information about the environment obtained and recorded in photographic, video and note form. The ‘virtual visit’ achieved success even when key visit stressors (barriers to adoption) identified by occupational therapists prior to the project’s inception by the technology developers (Mazumdar et al., 2017) were imposed and varied as shown in Table 2. Stressors were Wi-Fi coverage, geographic distance from the base, and trusted visitor and occupational therapists identities.…”

“…Created by adapting an existing technology developed for use with Italian emergency services called ‘eyes on the ground’ (Mazumdar et al., 2017), the ViVA (Virtual Visit Approach) technology used within this project offered occupational therapists the ability to undertake remote audio/video home assessments or ‘virtual visits’.…”

“…The clinical research occupational therapists collated all acceptability data within NVivo software (QRS International, 2019), identifying key descriptive themes using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Objective assessment (SUS) questionnaire responses were statistically analysed and detailed within Mazumdar et al. (2017).…”

“…Clinicians felt delivering occupational therapy home assessments in some circumstances was problematic. Computer scientists collaborated with occupational therapists to find a potential digital solution only previously applied within emergency services (Mazumdar et al., 2017).…”