End-user oriented strategies to facilitate multi-organizational adoption of emergency management information systems

  • Authors:

  • Ignacio Aedo;Paloma Díaz;John M. Carroll;Gregorio Convertino;Mary Beth Rosson

  • Affiliations:

  • Computer Science Department, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Avda de la Universidad 30, 28911 Leganés, Spain;Computer Science Department, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Avda de la Universidad 30, 28911 Leganés, Spain;College of Information Science and Technology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA;Palo Alto Research Center, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA;College of Information Science and Technology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

  • Venue:
  • Information Processing and Management: an International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Response to large-scale emergencies is a cooperative process that requires the active and coordinated participation of a variety of functionally independent agencies operating in adjacent regions. In practice, this essential cooperation is sometimes not attained or is reduced due to poor information sharing, non-fluent communication flows, and lack of coordination. We report an empirical study of IT-mediated cooperation among Spanish response agencies and we describe the challenges of adoption, information sharing, communication flows, and coordination among agencies that do not share a unity of command. We analyze three strategies aimed at supporting acceptance and surmounting political, organizational and personal distrust or skepticism: participatory design, advanced collaborative tools inducing cognitive absorption, and end-user communities of practice.