Synthetic Environments for Investigating Collaborative Information Seeking: An Application in Emergency Restoration of Critical Infrastructures

Mendonça David (), Wallace William A., Brooks James and Cutler Barbara
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Brooks James: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute – Industrial and Systems Engineering, Troy, NY, USA
Cutler Barbara: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute – Computer Science, Troy, NY, USA

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 2015, vol. 12, issue 3, 763-784

Abstract: Large-scale disasters can produce profound disruptions in the fabric of interdependent critical infrastructure systems such as water, telecommunications and electric power. The work of post-disaster infrastructure restoration typically requires information sharing and close collaboration across these sectors; yet – due to a number of factors – the means to investigate decision making phenomena associated with these activities are limited. This paper motivates and describes the design and implementation of a computer-based synthetic environment for investigating collaborative information seeking in the performance of a (simulated) infrastructure restoration task. The main contributions of this work are twofold. First, it develops a set of theoretically grounded measures of collaborative information seeking processes and embeds them within a computer-based system. Second, it suggests how these data may be organized and modeled to yield insights into information seeking processes in the performance of a complex, collaborative task. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of this work for practice and for future research.

Keywords: computer-based collaboration; critical infrastructure; disaster response (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1515/jhsem-2014-0083

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