Workshop 08-ERDM

International Workshop on

Collaborations in Emergency Response and Disaster Management (ERDM 2012)

Call for Papers and Participation

As part of

The 2012 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS 2012)

http://cts2012.cisedu.info

May 21-25, 2012

The Westin Westminster Hotel

Denver, Colorado, USA

In Cooperation with ACM, IEEE, and IFIP

Extended Submission Deadline: February 07, 2012

Submissions could be for full papers, short papers, poster papers, or posters

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

Disasters are events that cause dramatic losses of life and property and disrupt the normal functioning of the economy and society on a large scale. Disaster management is a multifaceted process aimed at minimizing the social and physical impact of these large-scale events. Emergency response seeks to contain the event and minimize loss of life and injuries (rescue), health impacts, and property loss. Examples of immediate response include search and rescue operations. Responding to disasters involves such information- and communication-intensive activities as planning and marshaling available resources and materiel, mobilizing and organizing sufficient skilled personnel, determining emergency situations and levels, deploying them with those resources to where they are needed, and finally coordinating their activities and services. Specific tasks include establishing connectivity with potential resource and service providers, authorizing the use of resources and coordinating their use into something akin to a supply chain, integrating information from diverse (including ad hoc) sources, reducing the volume of data to relevant information for recipients, directing ongoing operations based on an overall awareness of the situation, adjusting and altering prior plans and commitments based on the evolving situation, and supporting collaboration and distributed decision making.

This workshop on Collaborations in Emergency Response and Disaster Management – to be held as part of the 2012 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS 2012) – will focus on collaborative systems and technologies that support effective team work in crisis and emergency management. Emergency response and disaster management typically require collective intelligence from multiple, distributed agencies, task groups, and individuals, and involve making collaborative decisions and taking coordinated actions. However, current information systems are rarely designed to support group work in emergency response situations. There is a need for establishing a long-term, interdisciplinary research agenda that aims to improve information technology support to collaborations in disaster management and emergency response.

The objective of this workshop is to highlight key design challenges and major advances in the design, implementation, and assessment of collaborative technologies for crisis management. We invite original contributions from researchers and practitioners in academia, government, and industry in this emerging field.

Topics of Interest include (but are not limited to):

    • Conceptualizing the roles of information technologies in collaborations during emergency response and disaster management

    • Emergency and Disaster Prediction

    • Collaborative sense-making and information foraging

    • Collaborative decision-making under stress, time pressure and inadequate resources

    • Supporting collaborations in emergency operation centers (EOCs).

    • Infra-structures, technologies and services for mediating same-time, different place collaboration communications among distributed crisis management teams and organizations

    • Supporting collaborations among citizens (in disaster impacted area) through personal mobile computing devices and novel information services

    • Social Science aspects of Emergency Response and Disaster Management

    • Collaborative information systems architectures, technologies, or algorithms that address particular challenges in crisis management

    • Collaborative virtual environment for situation awareness

    • Experiences in applying collaborative technologies to emergency responses or exercises

    • Geospatial information technology and geocollaboration

Instructions for Authors:

You are invited to submit original and unpublished research works on above and other topics related to collaborative emergency response and disaster management. Submitted papers must not have been published or simultaneously submitted elsewhere. Submission should include a cover page with authors' names, affiliation addresses, fax numbers, phone numbers, and email addresses. Please, indicate clearly the corresponding author and include up to 6 keywords from the above list of topics and an abstract of no more than 400 words. The full manuscript should be at most 8 pages using the two-column IEEE format. Additional pages will be charged at additional fee. Short papers (up to 4 pages), poster papers and poster (please refer to http://cts2012.cisedu.info/home/posters for the submission details) will also be accepted. In case of multiple authors, an indication of which author is responsible for correspondence must be indicated. Please include page numbers on all submissions to make it easier for reviewers to provide helpful comments.

Submit a PDF copy of your full manuscript via via the Workshop submission Web page at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=erdm2012.

Only PDF files will be accepted, uploaded to the workshop link above. Each paper will receive a minimum of three reviews. Papers will be selected based on their originality, relevance, contributions, technical clarity and presentation. Submission implies the willingness of at least one of the authors to register and present the paper, if accepted. Authors of accepted papers must guarantee that their papers will be registered and presented at the workshop.

Accepted papers will be published in the Conference proceedings. Instructions for final manuscript format and requirements will be posted on the CTS 2012 web site later. It is our intent to have the proceedings formally published in hard and soft copies and be available at the time of the conference. The proceedings is projected to be included in the IEEE Digital Library and indexed accordingly.

If you have any questions about paper submission or the workshop, please contact the workshop organizers.

IMPORTANT DATES

Extended Paper Submissions: ----------------------------- February 07, 2012

Acceptance Notification: ------------------------------------- February 21, 2012

Camera Ready Papers and Registration Due: ------------ March 07, 2012

Conference Dates: ----------------------------------------- ---- May 21 - 25, 2012

Workshop Organizers

Volkmar Pipek Thomas Rose

IISI and Universität Siegen, Germany Fraunhofer FIT & RWTH Aachen, Germany

Phone: +49 (0) 271/ 740 - 4068 Phone: +49 (0) 2241 / 14-2798

Fax: +49 (0) 271/ 740 - 3384 Fax: +49 (0) 2241 / 14-2080

Email: volkmar.pipek@uni-siegen.de Email: thomas.rose@fit.fraunhofer.de

Technical Program Committee:

All submitted papers will be rigorously reviewed by the Workshop Technical Program Committee members following similar criteria used in CTS 2012.

  • Richard Arias-Hernandez, Simon Fraser University, BC, Canada

  • Ali Asgary, York University, ON, Canada

  • Guoray Cai, Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA

  • Brian Fisher, Simon Fraser University/University of British Columbia, Canada

  • Hien Nam Le, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

  • Massimo Mecella, University of Rome - La Sapienza, Italy

  • Daniel Mossé, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA

  • Mark Pfaff, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, IN, USA

  • Alka Sapat, Florida Atlantic University, FL, USA

  • Jishnu Subedi, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

  • Hong-Linh Truong, Vienna University of Technology, Austria

(*Partial TPC. Committee confirmations are pending.)

For information or questions about Conference's paper submission, tutorials, posters, workshops, special sessions, exhibits, demos, panels and forums organization, doctoral colloquium, and any other information about the conference location, registration, paper formatting, etc., please consult the Conference’s web site at URL: http://cts2012.cisedu.info/ or contact one of the Conference's organizers or Co-Chairs: Geoffrey C. Fox at gcf@indiana.edu and Waleed W. Smari at Smari@arys.org.