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Data for Emergency Response

Disaster Information Management is NOT a Technical Problem

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Disaster Information Management is NOT a Technical Problem

On one of the email listservs I belong to, I am having a spirited conversation about why disaster information management is so hard. I wrote the article (that sparked the conversation) nearly a month and a half ago to describe many of the non-technical challenges related to disaster information management and technological innovation, of which there are many.

In short, the article gave an overview of challenges at the Community, Agency and Individual levels and highlighted information flow impediments such as:

• Inaccessibility

• Inconsistent Data and Information Formats

• Inadequate Stream of Information (Shortage/Overload)

• Low Information Priority

• Source Identification Difficulty

• Storage Media Mismanagement

• Unreliability

• Unwillingness

If you are thinking the above list are technical challenges, though, think again. These are all challenges that can be overcome with the support of technology, but are really challenges with community and organizational policy and operations. They have to do with how communities and organizations approach their disaster information workflows and processes and how they enact policies that enable the adoption and diffusion of new technological innovations.

Much more research needs to be poured into this area to better understand the community and organizational factors and conditions leading to effective information management and technological innovation. In fact, a whole line of research needs to dedicated solely to this issue.

This issue is also deeper than anyone thinks. If your community or organization is not set up with the proper information policies and operational workflows and processes, technology will continue to be more of a hindrance than help. You will have significant cost overruns related to implementation and training and end up with sub-par products that don't quite meet your needs.

The value proposition of technology will also continue to decline and everyone will suffer as the world gets more complex and the need for effective information sharing grows exponentially. You will end up with yet another tool that works in a vacuum and is wildly insufficient for the highly interdependent world of disaster management that relies heavily on citizens and partners to formulate an effective and efficient response.

Of course, what does it mean to have the 'proper information policies and operational workflows and process?' This is a very important question and one that everyone should start looking at very closely. I am exploring this in my research, but the issue is far greater than one PhD student.

So, I want to know from you...What do YOU think communities and organizations should do to solve this problem? What steps should they take? What is the roadmap to get there? What else do we need to know about how we use disaster information?

Peter Burgess YOU

I like to remind people that technology is maybe a million times more powerful now than it was 50 years ago. I installed a mainframe computer in 1967 with 4K of main memory. Now my cellphone has 4G. We went to the moon on top of very primitive technology compared to today! One of the structural problems with data for development and data in the emergency situation is that modern powerful technology operates in the main with very rigid data structures. In my work in emergency situations I used to look for 'easy data' that was in existence in the place but usually not in a format our computers could use. These 'easy data' were often enough to answer the immediate questions pretty much in real time, and we then organized the data for subsequent computer analysis ... but we had already taken action based on the initial flow of 'easy data'. Over the years nearly every community on the planet has been visited by 'experts' but very little of the easy data that they accumulated has ever been organized in order to be used by the relief and development community at large. I see this as a huge waste. I saw it all the time when I was active in this arena, and it seems to be an ongoing issue. The reason seems to be a mix of people not knowing how to make the most out of data, people seeing data as their own intellectual property and competitive advantage, and the data experts not being organized to make much use of rather disorganized easy data. Integrating easy data with a platform that includes Google Earth or something like it seems like a no-brainer. There must be someone doing this ... but is it going to be OpenSource? Peter Burgess TrueValueMetrics ... Multi Dimension Impact Accounting 16s

Linda Reissman Linda Reissman Director, Emergency Management at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Brandon. I believe you have hit upon a key issue. I see it over and over again when organizations invest in tools that cannot be effectively implemented into their own Internal workflow no less an integrated one with partners. This is partly fueled organizations needing to spend grant funds and the marketplace which refuses to make tools that are on a comparable platform. Granted some tools can speak to each other but not without some expensive modifications. A good example is the multitude of incident command applications. The first thing that should happen is the development of industry standards for communication and incident command platforms. I know that this eXists for some of the notification tools but from the standpoint of integrating response many platforms are independent and stand alone Like(1)Reply24 days ago Brandon Greenberg

Timothy Riecker Timothy Riecker Emergency Management Consultant and Preparedness Expert

You couldn't be more right. I know it's a bit cliche, but seriously - we can put people on the moon. Of course we have the technology to overcome information management issues. It really all comes down to people. We will always have different systems. Why? 1) Technology will change and not everyone will keep up with it at the same pace. 2) Different communities have different preferences. 3) Different communities have different budgets. Of course by 'communities' I also mean the people and leaders within those communities. I just had a discussion with a county EM down at EMI earlier this week about some of the challenges he has had with the public safety organizations within his jurisdiction. He wants to get their county-wide communication system up to par from the analog system they still have in place. He is receiving a great deal of pushback because many of the stakeholders say 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'. While they may be comfortable with the system they have, they aren't considering how others will interface with their systems and the new/different types of data which can be communicated with a current tech digital system. (I for one have no problem with analog systems and think they should be maintained as back up systems, as I have certainly seen my fair share of failures of digital systems). There is also a never ending struggle with customization in the face of standardization. While we endeavor to standardize practices and equipment across the professions of public safety, everyone wants different features. Sometimes these can be accommodated, sometimes not without altering a standard. TR Like(1)Reply(1)28 days ago

Brandon Greenberg Brandon Greenberg Brandon Greenberg AUTHOR 2nd Resilience // Innovation // Technology

Thanks for the additional thoughts Tim. These are great. This post seems to be resonating with a lot of people. You bring up great examples of specifics. Like28 days ago