Studies of management during large scale emergency responses highlight frequently recurring problems with the timely communication of the information that responders need in order to make effective actionable decisions. In itself, advances in communications interoperability will not eliminate the problems of filtering and presenting data that is only relevant to persons in specific roles. Under conditions of time-urgency, large amounts of unfiltered information are often ignored because making sense of it absorbs too much time and energy. Research in the field of cognitive ergonomics indicates the critical importance of enabling situation awareness, and reveals that team performance is improved when information requirements are anticipated before the information is needed. Further, agencies need to co-create valued information—Persons in agencies should understand not only the information they need to respond effectively and where it can be acquired, but also be prepared to provide the information needed by persons in other agencies who are also responding to the emergency.
In response to the problems of managing communications, an analytic tool designed to improve inter-agency coordination, a Situatiol Awareness Information Requirement Analysis (SAIRA) was developed. The approach has two important characteristics: (1) The SAIRA approach is based on extensive work in the field of cognitive ergonomics; and, (2) researchers and emergency responders collaborate in generating the data used for the analysis. The SAIRA approach involves an intuitively compelling mental model that helps emergency responders analyze their response goals, the actionable decisions they might need to make in pursuit of those goals, the information they need to make those decisions, and the sources of information (especially from other agencies) where they can acquire that information.
The research team at John Jay College has conducted studies to test whether the SAIRA can be deployed using a collaborative approach where researchers elicit the data from practitioners, and the practitioners examine the resulting data to determine whether it accurately reflects their views. The paper will report research where SAIRA has been used in workshops in two studies: (1) to help develop the situation awareness information requirements to operate emergency occupant evacuation elevators; and, (2) to improve inter-agency responses to pipeline emergencies. Using an interview format, SAIRA was used to elicit and verify data and model information requirements from first responders (police and fire fighters) during high rise building emergencies. While the theoretical basis for SAIRA is clearly established, the refinement and use of SAIRA as a tool in information requirements development and product evaluation tool requires more development.
Finally, the SAIRA approach demonstrates how the research community can provide a theoretically-based analytic tool that better enables multi-agency cooperation The SAIRA approach directly addresses (1) the need to create value for emergency responders by anticipating information requirements, and (2) the challenges of multi-agency cooperation and interoperability by both anticipating where agencies can both acquire needed information and provide information that other agencies will need to respond effectively.
