Designing Context-Aware HCI for Collaborative Emergency Management
Felix Flentge, Stefan Weber, Alexander Behring, Thomas Ziegert · 2008
When a disaster strikes the management and coordination of all available resources becomes a crucial and challenging task. Availability of information and effective communication is of utmost importance. Efficient support for first responders and decision makers coordinating the assignments is necessary to save time and lives as many victims might not survive long without appropriate assistance. Context-aware computing and suitable HCI may provide key contributions to support first responders as well as decision makers within their difficult tasks. This position paper discusses preliminary thoughts on basic questions relevant to the design of HCI for emergency management. A short overview of the challenges of HCI in emergency scenarios is given. Some implications of these challenges, the need for context-aware user interfaces and the careful design of the interaction methods and devices are discussed briefly.