Crisis Information Management

Communication and Technologies

Christine Hagar, Christine Hagar

• Publisher: Chandos Publishing
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781780632872
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the management of information in crises, particularly the interconnectedness of information, people, and technologies during crises. Natural disasters, such as the Haiti earthquake and Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11 and human-made crises, such as the recent political disruption in North Africa and the Middle East, have demonstrated that there is a great need to understand how individuals, government, and non-government agencies create, access, organize, communicate, and disseminate information within communities during crisis situations. This edited book brings together papers written by researchers and practitioners from a variety of information perspectives in crisis preparedness, response and recovery.

• Edited by the author who coined the term crisis informatics
• Provides new technological insights into crisis management information
• Contributors are from information science, information management, applied information technology, informatics, computer science, telecommunications, and libraries

1

The effects of continual disruption: technological resources supporting resilience in regions of conflict

Bryan Semaan, Gloria Mark and Ban Al-Ani

Abstract:

This chapter reports on an ongoing empirical study looking at how technology can enable resilience during continual disruption. We conducted 125 interviews with civilians from two countries who were living through war: (1) Iraqi citizens who experienced the current Gulf War beginning in March 2003; and (2) Israeli citizens who were living in Northern Israel during the Israel–Lebanon War that took place in August 2006. We describe how technology played a major role in enabling people to maintain work and social collaborations, continue education, travel, and obtain information in an otherwise chaotic environment.

Key words

disrupted environments

resilience

collaboration

routines

empirical study

Introduction

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are changing the way that citizens are responding to environmental disruptions. In conflict zones it can be dangerous for people to travel and maintain their normal activities. However, with ubiquitous technologies such as the mobile phone and Internet applications, people can coordinate and communicate to help restore activities through negotiating travel, increasing situational awareness, and conducting online social interaction.

In this chapter, we will describe research from an ongoing study where we are trying to better understand how technology can enable resilience when used by civilians experiencing war (Mark and Semaan, 2008; Mark, Al-Ani, and Semaan, 2009; Semaan and Mark, 2011).

Researchers have been studying the social effects of disasters for many years. Studies of disaster events have looked at how affected populations deal with being socially disrupted, and how individuals, groups, and organizations modify their behaviors in order to continue acting in this new context (e.g. Mileti, Drabek, and Haas, 1975). This perspective is highly applicable to war situations – when people are living in a war zone, normal life is disrupted and people must modify their behaviors accordingly.

While the term disaster has received various definitions (Quarantelli, 1998), disasters have generally been viewed as non-routine events causing social disruption and physical harm with the following key properties: (1) length of forewarning, (2) magnitude of impact, (3) scope of impact, and (4) duration of impact (Kreps, 1998). Disruptions caused by violent conflict are also non-routine events that cause social disruption and physical harm. Civilians living in a conflict zone may need to halt routine activities, such as going to work, due to the constant exposure to bombs, militias, and other disruptive, life-threatening elements. However, there is one key defining characteristic that differentiates a violent conflict from a disaster. Disasters are generally single events in time and space that disrupt a society (Dynes, 1970). Unlike disasters, when individuals live in a conflict zone they must deal with constant risk and uncertainty in their environment. It is difficult to predict when or where a bomb will fall or a militia may strike. As such, civilians living in a war zone deal with random events on a daily basis for a prolonged period of time and must make themselves continuously aware of what is taking place around them in order to act.

The focus of the majority of disaster studies has been on the short periods before, during, and after a disaster takes place (Quarantelli, 1996). By studying disruption as caused by war we can better understand how individuals maintain routine life on a daily basis during long-term disruption that may last for years. In a normal environment, we often engage in various practices for work, social life, education, travel, and obtaining information. By studying life in war environments, we can understand how people who are living through prolonged disruption maintain these practices in light of their situation.

Technologies to aid resilient behavior

During disruptive events, where the environment is unstable and activities are greatly unpredictable, civilians in the impacted area may be forced to change the way in which they live. Thus, when people face the unexpected on a daily basis, expectations for routine life may change. On the one hand, when people live through extreme situations they may no longer be able to travel to and from work or university. On the other hand, people may find ways to be resilient to maintain these routines. Resilience has been defined in various ways, but the most common definition centers around people’s reactive abilities – how people ‘bounce back’ and persevere despite the situation (Kendra and Wachtendorf, 2003b).

Researchers have identified various ways in which individuals, groups, and organizations are resilient in maintaining aspects of their daily lives during disaster (e.g. Buenza and Stark, 2003; Kendra and Wachtendorf, 2003b), where one of the major sources of resilience is improvisation (Weick, 1993). When people are unable to act in traditional ways during disruption, they often engage in new behavior in order to cope (Rodriguez et al., 2006).

During various types of disasters ranging from hurricanes to tornadoes, people have improvised by altering their work locations (Webb, 2004) or developing ad hoc facilities to maintain organizational function (Buenza and Stark, 2003) when workplaces were damaged or inaccessible. For example, Buenza and Stark (2003) reported how a Wall Street trading organization moved to a temporary site following the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and resumed operations six days after the event. Additionally, people improvise by modifying their work hours in order to accommodate growing needs (Quarantelli, 1996). For example, it may be necessary for individuals to work for longer periods of time to maintain proper organizational functions. In other cases, resilience has been observed according to people’s ability to improvise by assuming various organizational roles, or developing new roles – where roles are defined as expected tasks associated with specific individual occupations. Role improvisation may ensure group and organizational stability during a disruptive event (Weick, 1993; Webb, 2004). A web developer assuming a clerical position when co-workers are unable to travel to work is an example of this type of resilience.

Other properties of resilience, in addition to the improvisational aspects covered thus far, enable an effective response to situations that are ambiguous with rapidly changing conditions. The properties identified are communication, creativity, wisdom, and respectful interaction (Weick, 1993; Kendra and Wachtendorf, 2003a). Resilience has also been discussed as a series of properties for maintaining organizational function during disruptive events, namely, robustness, resourcefulness, redundancy, and rapidity (Kendra, 2001; Bruneau et al., 2002).

Resources also play a critical role in enabling resilient behavior. When disruption occurs, people often improvise the tools or equipment used to perform tasks (Weick, 1993). One theory of social practice, structuration theory, explores the relationship between human agency and social structure (Giddens, 1984). In this view, Giddens realized that social structure and people’s agency (their ability to act) form a recursive relationship – one where human agency can shape social structures, and where agency is mediated by social structures. Here, social structure is composed of rules and resources, both of which are important elements in guiding people’s actions. Resources have received special attention from researchers in psychology (Hobfoll, 1989, 1998) and the organizational sciences (Feldman, 2004), as they enable people to act in various contexts. Feldman (2004), in looking at resources from an organizational perspective, showed how when people’s practices change, so do the ways in which they use resources. To this effect, the use of resources (e.g. materials and information) is contextual: their meaning and use changes depending on the situation. This is important for the study of disasters, because when the environment in which people live is no longer normal, the meaning and use of resources can change accordingly.

Tool and equipment improvisations have been well documented. For example, wooden doors have been used as makeshift stretchers to transport injured civilians when normal stretchers were not available (Webb, 2004). More recently, the role technological resources play during emergency situations has emerged as an active research topic in the Computer Supported Coooperative Work (CSCW) and HumanComputer Interaction (CHI) communities (e.g. Hagar and Haythornthwaite, 2005; Palen and Liu, 2007; Torrey et al., 2007; Vieweg et al., 2008). These studies have mostly focused on the use of technology in the short period following a specific disaster event. Here, however, we are interested in how technological resources can enable resilience during continual disruption as caused by war.

Research setting

The findings of our investigation into technology use during conflict need to be considered within the context of the conflicts themselves; here we present a description of each setting. We interviewed civilians living in two regions that were undergoing severe conflict.

We interviewed people living in Israel during the Israel–Lebanon war that took place in the North of Israel (Haifa) from July 12, 2005 to August 14, 2006. Although a war was taking place in the country for 34 days, the infrastructure remained robust. Citizens in the conflict zone continued to have uninterrupted access to landline telephone systems, cellular and broadband Internet networks, electricity, and clean water. Additionally, the majority of Israel’s residents had adopted and integrated various technologies into their daily repertoire prior to the war. For example, 74 percent of all households have broadband Internet¹¹ (Internet World Stats) and there are currently more cellular phones in use than there are people.

Various disruptive elements, however, made it difficult for citizens of the country to maintain their routines. First, bombs, i.e. Katyusha rockets, were exploding randomly, thus making it difficult to travel within the country. Our informants were unable to easily travel to work, or to visit friends and family, or even the grocery store. Second, sirens notifying citizens of impending danger were also altering the way in which people were accustomed to managing their daily lives. When people heard a siren, they would often halt what they were doing and flee to the nearest bomb shelter. Lastly, many fled the impact area and sought refuge in other countries or safe zones within the south of Israel. In various cases, members of organizations were no longer working in collocated environments, as team members were traveling from place to place. As explained by our informants, the country had two completely different environments. For those not living in Northern Israel, it was as if a war was not taking place; people were conducting their daily lives as usual.

We also interviewed civilians who experienced conflict due to the current Gulf War in Iraq. The eight-year Iran–Iraq war (1980–88), the war with with Kuwait two years later, and the United Nations-imposed embargo lasting approximately 13 years...