Abstract
Many research teams have developed mobile computing architectures to support the emergency and rescue services in a range of civil contingencies. These proposals are based on innovative technologies and show considerable creativity in the design of their user interfaces. In contrast, this paper presents lessons learned from the 2007 UK floods. Mobile telecommunications failed in many different ways and from many different causes, including physical damage to handsets, as well as the loss of base stations and UPSs. The insights gained from the floods are being used to inform the design of next generation mobile digital communications systems for UK responders. However, the technical problems are arguably less important than the insights that were obtained about ‘systemic’ failures in the interfaces between local government, emergency services and the variety of agencies that must cooperate in major civil contingencies. Problems in information management led to inconsistencies and incompatibilities. In consequence, the output from one application could not easily be used as input to systems operated by other agencies. These issues must be addressed before we are overwhelmed by the increased bandwidth afforded by new mobile devices and novel sensing technologies. It is concluded that unless we understand the chaos, complexity and the contextual issues that characterise previous emergency situations then there is little prospect that we will be able to design effective mobile technologies for future incidents.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Auriol, E.: AMIRA: Advanced Multi-modal Intelligence for Remote Assistance. In: Löffler, J., Klann, M. (eds.) Mobile Response 2007. LNCS, vol. 4458, pp. 51–60. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Baber, C., Cross, J., Smith, P., Robinson, D.: Supporting Implicit Coordination Between Distributed Teams in Disaster Management. In: Löffler, J., Klann, M. (eds.) Mobile Response 2007. LNCS, vol. 4458, pp. 39–50. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
BBC New, Arrests follow police car death (May 21, 2008) (last accessed June 23, 2008), http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/7410441.stm
Chittaro, L., Zuliani, F., Carchietti, E.: Mobile Devices in Emergency Medical Services: User Evaluation of a PDA-based Interface for Ambulance Run Reporting. In: Löffler, J., Klann, M. (eds.) Mobile Response 2007. LNCS, vol. 4458, pp. 20–29. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Johnson, C.W.: A Handbook of Accident and Incident Reporting, University of Glasgow Press, Glasgow (2003) (last accessed June 24, 2008), http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~johnson/book
Klann, M.: Playing with Fire: User-Centered Design of Wearable Computing for Emergency Response. In: Löffler, J., Klann, M. (eds.) Mobile Response 2007. LNCS, vol. 4458, pp. 116–125. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Knight, S.K.: Facing the Challenge: The Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser’s review of the operational response by the Fire and Rescue Service to the widespread flooding in England during 2007, Department for Communities and Local Government, London, UK (March 2008)
National Imagery and Mapping Agency, Using Nautical Charts with Global Positioning System, 2nd edn. (last accessed June 24, 2008), http://www.geocomm.com/channel/gps/news/nimagps2/
NRC: Summary of Workshop on Using Information Technology to Enhance Disaster Management. The National Academics Press, Washington, DC (2005)
Palen, L., Hiltz, S.R., Liu, S.: Online Forums Supporting Grassroots Participation in Emergency Preparedness and Response. Communication of the ACM 50(3), 54–58
Pitt Review learning Lessons from the 2007 Floods (Interim report), Cabinet Office, London, UK (December 2007)
Van Den Eede, G., Van de Walle, B.: Operational risk in incident management: a cross-fertilisation between ISCRAM and IT governance. In: Van de Walle, B., Carle, B. (eds.) Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on information systems for crisis response and management ISCRAM 2005, pp. 53–60 (2005)
Waldher, F., Thierry, J., Grasser, S.: Aspects of Anatomical and Chronological Sequence Diagrams in Software-Supported Emergency Care Patient Report Forms. In: Löffler, J., Klann, M. (eds.) Mobile Response 2007. LNCS, vol. 4458, pp. 9–18. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Johnson, C.W. (2009). Complexity, Structured Chaos and the Importance of Information Management for Mobile Computing in the UK Floods of 2007. In: Löffler, J., Klann, M. (eds) Mobile Response. Mobile Response 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5424. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00440-7_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00440-7_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-00439-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-00440-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)