CfP Collaboration and Crisis Informatics at CSCW 2012
==========================================

Organizers: 
Volkmar Pipek, University of Siegen, Germany
Jonas Landgren, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Leysia Palen, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

Paper deadline EXTENDED until December 2, 2011, submission via email to [log in to unmask] (Have a peaceful Thanksgiving weekend…!)
Workshop: 11 or 12 February 2012 at CSCW 2012, Seattle, WA, USA
http://crisisinformatics.wineme.fb5.uni-siegen.de/
http://www.cscw2012.org/participation/workshops.php

Events like 9/11, the hurricane Katrina or the Sendai Earthquake have drawn more and more attention on ways how individuals, organizations or society as a whole can improve their crisis preparedness as well as their coping and recovery strategies in crisis situations. In all scenarios, the collaboration of professional responders, public administrations and citizens and organizations affected offers a great potential that needs to be further understood and explored. In this workshop we will bring together academics from various disciplines as well as reflective practitioners to discuss challenges and approaches for improving intra- and interorganizational collaboration in crisis situations.

This workshop addresses the topic of understanding and supporting intra- and interorganizational collaboration in crisis situations. It aims at drawing together experts from academia and practice to collect and discuss empirical studies, theoretical considerations and technological concepts to improve crisis preparedness as well as coping and recovery work in crisis scenarios.

Crisis Informatics does not only target the development of technologies and information systems that help professional actors in their coping and recovery work, but particularly addresses  socio-technical concerns in medium- to large-scale emergency response. Additionally it expands consideration to include not only official responders (who tend to be the focus in policy and technology-focused matters), but also members of the public. It therefore views emergency response as a social system where information is disseminated within and between official and public channels and entities. Crisis informatics wrestles with methodological concerns as it strives to develop new theory and support informed development of ICT and policy.

As the diversity of the challenges of emergency management and response increases with the number and complexity of threats organizations and the society face, the opportunities to collaborate on the basis of an exploding number of communication and collaboration technologies (mobile devices, locating devices, social networking sites, crowdsourcing approaches) urge us to find new ways of understanding, conceptualizing and evaluating possible usages for these collaboration technologies in emergency management and response. Interesting research topics we invite position papers for include (but are not restricted to):
	• studies in the use of social software for collaboration in emergency response
	• studies in the collaborative use of mobile and locating devices in emergency response
	• theoretical considerations on emergency response as a social system,
	• technological concepts and prototypes to support collaboration in crisis situations,
	• methodological and ethical considerations of doing research in and for crisis situations.


Goals, Format and Organization of the Workshop

The workshop aims at identifying and structuring key factors and challenges for preparation, coping and recovery work in crisis situations. It particularly aims at fostering a research agenda that looks at emergency response as a continuous social process of a network of interdependent actors and organizations. We will discuss and develop
1.	theoretical approaches to capture collaboration dynamics in crisis situations,
2.	appropriate research methods and strategies to make practitioners experiences accessible for academic work
3.	appropriate design, development and evaluation methodologies to conceptualize and test innovative approaches using collaborative technologies in a way that secures their relevance for emergency response practice.
The results will be published in a number of ways (see below). An overall goal of the workshop will be to identify and articulate issues for future research.

We will solicit contributions from the IS, HCI and CSCW communities as well as from researchers and practitioners in the area of emergency management and response, using all usual channels incl. announcements in mailing lists, conferences and personal contacts.

Prospective participants should submit a position paper of up to 4 pages (ACM CSCW Full Paper Style) describing their interests and previous work in the topic of the workshop and first comments concerning a list of research issues they derive from their expertise and experience. We will compile and publish on the Workshop Website prior to the deadline these research interests. We will select participants on the basis of their abstract's quality and their response to the list of issues; the diversity of their backgrounds, aiming at an inter-disciplinary group. To enable a focussed and productive discussion, we limit the number of participants to 20.

The workshop will last one day. Sessions are to be organized around research issues, trying to induce fruitful discussions, possibly around competitive positions, followed by summarizing activities.

All the best
Volkmar Pipek
--
Volkmar Pipek, PhD
Assistant Professor for 'CSCW in Organisations'/Fak. III
University of Siegen
Hoelderlinstr. 3
57068 Siegen
http://www.cscw.uni-siegen.de/
Tel.: +49 271 740 4068
Fax.: +49 271 740 3384
Mob.: +49 151 56088078
[log in to unmask]