Supporting Humanitarian Relief Logistics Operations through Online ...

Brian Mutton

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• Publié par: McLuhan-Marshall
• Nombre de lectures: 25
• Langue: Español

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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.

Categories and Subject Descriptors

H.5.3 [

Information Interfaces and Presentation

]: Group and

Organization

Interfaces

–

Asynchronous

interaction,

Collaborative computing, Computer-supported cooperative work,

Web-based interaction.

General Terms

Management, Design, Experimentation, Human Factors

Keywords

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

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 organization-

specific 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.

2. ONLINE GEOCOLLABORATION

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

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for

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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.

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.

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

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

[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).