Leveraging a Wiki to EnhanceVirtual Collaboration in the Emergency Domain

Abstract

In a crisis situation, critical success factors include good preparedness, the availability of trustworthy information and reliable people, and the responders' ability to improvise with the available, functioning tools. Wikis can be used as collaborative group support systems to support these activities, especially for communities of practice that must operate as high reliability organizations. The advantages of using a wiki are especially beneficial in volatile environments, such as those in the emergency domain, where critical real-time decision making is required. An international wikiemergenciWiki.org -has been created and is being used by both practitioners and academics. The conclusions include that wiki features and functionality, which are important for safetycritical work, should add a minimum of bureaucratic overhead while helping to establish trust and a sense of purpose and community among the users, thus easing the evaluation of information reliability while strenghening ad hoc group interaction.

An online social network for emergency management

“…The Web2.0 environment is making mass collaboration easier. The use of Social Networking Sites (SNS) shows considerable promise for more efficient and effective communications in the emergency field (White, Turoff and Van de Walle, 2007a; White, Plotnick, Turoff and Hiltz, 2007b; Benbunan-Fich and Koufaris, 2007; White, Plotnick, Aadams-Moring, Turoff and Hiltz, 2008a; White Hiltz and Turoff, 2008b;Turoff, Hiltz, White, Plotnick, Hendela, and Xiang, 2008). Garton, Haythornthwaite, and Wellman (1997) describe a social network as "a set of people (or organizations or other social entities) connected by a set of social relationships, such as friendship, co-working or information exchange" (Garton, et al, 1997, p.2).…”

The Past as the Future of Emergency Preparedness and Management

“…There are also in various communities severe problems in communications because non governmental groups are not regular members of the command and control system used during disasters. For example in many urban areas there is no active linkage between community organizations providing emergency health services and the general social support system in that community (Turoff and Hiltz, 2008). As a result, someone coming out of a hospital care situation after a disaster is not in any database that would interface to the community organizations that might help them further with such basic problems as shelter, food, and other forms of help.…”

“…In any case, what is clear is the following needs for emergency preparedness based risk analysis (Hendela et al, 2006;Turoff et al, 2002Turoff et al, , 2004aTuroff et al, , 2004bWhite et al, 2007a, 2007b, Yao and Turoff, 2007 This would be in essence a community recommender system for the community decision makers in local government, private companies, non profits, and other community organizations.…”

Improving the resilience of disaster management organizations through virtual communities of practice: A Delphi study

“…In this vein, increasingly disaster management practitioners join virtual communities of practice (VCoPs) to support communication and decision‐making needs as well as learn from others’ experiences (Herranz, Diez, Diaz, & Hiltz, ; Turoff & Hiltz, ). Previous studies have already described the application of VCoPs in the field of disaster management (Turoff, White, & Plotnick, ; White et al., ). However, these studies do not analyse the contribution of VCoPs to improving organizational resilience principles.…”