Summary of a Workshop on Information Technology Research for Crisis Management
Committee on Computing and Communications Research to Enable
Better Use of Information Technology in Government
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and
Applications
National Research Council
NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Washington, D.C.
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
Support for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation under grant EIA-9809120. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsor.
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THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
National Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Engineering
Institute of Medicine
National Research Council
The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Bruce M. Alberts is president of the National Academy of Sciences.
The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. William A. Wulf is president of the National Academy of Engineering.
The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Kenneth I. Shine is president of the Institute of Medicine.
The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bruce M. Alberts and Dr. William A. Wulf are chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.
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COMMITTEE ON COMPUTING AND COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH TO ENABLE BETTER USE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN GOVERNMENT
WILLIAM L. SCHERLIS, Carnegie Mellon University, Chair
W. BRUCE CROFT, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
DAVID DeWITT, University of Wisconsin at Madison
SUSAN DUMAIS, Microsoft Research
WILLIAM EDDY, Carnegie Mellon University
EVE GRUNTFEST, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
DAVID KEHRLEIN, Governor's Office of Emergency Services, State of California
SALLIE KELLER-McNULTY, Los Alamos National Laboratory
MICHAEL R. NELSON, IBM
CLIFFORD NEUMAN, Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California
Staff
MARJORY S. BLUMENTHAL, Director
JON EISENBERG, Program Officer and Study Director
RITA GASKINS, Project Assistant
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COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOARD
DAVID D. CLARK, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chair
FRANCES E. ALLEN, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
JAMES CHIDDIX, Time Warner Cable
JOHN M. CIOFFI, Stanford University
W. BRUCE CROFT, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
A.G. (SANDY) FRASER, AT&T
SUSAN L. GRAHAM, University of California at Berkeley
JAMES GRAY, Microsoft Corporation
PATRICK M. HANRAHAN, Stanford University
JUDITH HEMPEL, University of California at San Francisco
BUTLER W. LAMPSON, Microsoft Corporation
EDWARD D. LAZOWSKA, University of Washington
DAVID LIDDLE, Interval Research
JOHN MAJOR, Wireless Knowledge
TOM M. MITCHELL, Carnegie Mellon University
DONALD NORMAN, Nielsen Norman Group
RAYMOND OZZIE, Groove Networks
DAVID A. PATTERSON, University of California at Berkeley
LEE SPROULL, Boston University
LESLIE L. VADASZ, Intel Corporation
Staff
MARJORY S. BLUMENTHAL, Director
HERBERT S. LIN, Senior Scientist
JERRY R. SHEEHAN, Senior Program Officer
ALAN S. INOUYE, Program Officer
JON EISENBERG, Program Officer
GAIL PRITCHARD, Program Officer
JANET BRISCOE, Office Manager
DAVID DRAKE, Project Assistant
MARGARET MARSH, Project Assistant
DAVID PADGHAM, Project Assistant (offsite)
MICKELLE RODGERS, Senior Project Assistant
SUZANNE OSSA, Senior Project Assistant
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COMMISSION ON PHYSICAL SCIENCES, MATHEMATICS, AND APPLICATIONS
PETER M. BANKS, Veridian ERIM International, Inc., Co-chair
W. CARL LINEBERGER, University of Colorado, Co-chair
WILLIAM F. BALLHAUS, JR., Lockheed Martin Corp.
SHIRLEY CHIANG, University of California at Davis
MARSHALL H. COHEN, California Institute of Technology
RONALD G. DOUGLAS, Texas A&M University
SAMUEL H. FULLER, Analog Devices, Inc.
JERRY P. GOLLUB, Haverford College
MICHAEL F. GOODCHILD, University of California at Santa Barbara
MARTHA P. HAYNES, Cornell University
WESLEY T. HUNTRESS, JR., Carnegie Institution
CAROL M. JANTZEN, Westinghouse Savannah River Company
PAUL G. KAMINSKI, Technovation, Inc.
KENNETH H. KELLER, University of Minnesota
JOHN R. KREICK, Sanders, a Lockheed Martin Co. (retired)
MARSHA I. LESTER, University of Pennsylvania
DUSA McDUFF, State University of New York at Stony Brook
JANET NORWOOD, U.S. Commissioner of Labor Statistics (retired)
M. ELISABETH PATÉ-CORNELL, Stanford University
NICHOLAS P. SAMIOS, Brookhaven National Laboratory
ROBERT J. SPINRAD, Xerox PARC (retired)
NORMAN METZGER, Executive Director (through July 1999)
MYRON F. UMAN, Acting Executive Director (as of August 1999)
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Preface
As part of its new Digital Government program, the National Science Foundation (NSF) requested that the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) undertake an in-depth study of how information technology research and development could more effectively support advances in the use of information technology in government. CSTB's Committee on Computing and Communications Research to Enable Better Use of Information Technology in Government was established to organize two specific application-area workshops and conduct a broader study, based on these and other workshops, of how information technology research can enable improved and new government services, operations, and interactions with citizens.
The committee was asked to identify ways to foster interaction among computing and communications researchers, federal managers, and professionals in specific domains that can lead to collaborative research efforts. By establishing research links between these communities and creating testbeds aimed at meeting relevant requirements, NSF hopes to stimulate thinking in the computing and communications research community and throughout government about possibilities for advances in technology that will support a variety of digital government initiatives.
The first phase of the project focused on two illustrative application areas that are inherently governmental in nature—crisis management and federal statistics. The study committee convened two workshops to bring together stakeholders from the individual domains with researchers in computing and communications systems. The workshops were designed
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to facilitate interaction between the communities of stakeholders, provide specific feedback to mission agencies and NSF, and identify good examples of information technology research challenges that would also apply throughout the government. The first of these workshops, "Research in Information Technology to Support Crisis Management," was held on December 1–2, 1998, in Washington, D.C., and is summarized in this volume. A second workshop, "Information Technology Research for Federal Statistics," was held February 9–10, 1999. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), one of the participating agencies in a federal interagency applications team addressing crisis management,1 was a co-sponsor of the study's workshop on crisis management.
Participants in the crisis management workshop were drawn from the information technology research, information technology research management, and crisis management communities (see Appendix A). Building on CSTB's earlier work,2 the workshop focused specifically on how to move forward from the current technology baseline to future possibilities for addressing the information technology needs of crisis managers through research. The workshop provided an opportunity for these separate communities to interact and to learn how they might more effectively collaborate in developing improved systems to support crisis management in the long term.
Two keynote speeches outlined the status and current trends in the crisis management and information technology research communities. A set of case studies (summarized in Appendix B) and a subsequent panel explored a range of ways in which information technology is currently used in crisis management and articulated a set of challenges to the full development and exploitation of information technology for crisis management. The next panel described trends in key information technologies—computing and storage information management, databases, wireless communications, and wearable computers—to establish a baseline for defining future research efforts. Through a set of parallel breakout
1In February 1997, the Federal Information Services and Applications Council (FISAC) of the National Science and Technology Council's Computing Information and Communications Research and Development (CIC R&D) Subcommittee created an interagency applications team to address crises management. This group, now referred to as the Information Technology for Crisis Management (ITCM) Team, was established to promote collaborations among federal, state, local, and international governmental organizations and other sectors of the economy in order to identify, develop, test, and implement computing, information, and communications technologies for crises management applications.
2Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council. 1997. Computing and Communications in the Extreme. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. (summarized in Appendix C).
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sessions, workshop participants explored opportunities for collaborative research between the information technology and crisis management communities and identified a set of important research topics. The workshop concluded with panels that considered research management issues related to collaboration between the two communities and how the results of the workshop related to the broader context of digital government. This summary report is based on these presentations and discussions.
The development of specific requirements is, of course, beyond the scope of a single workshop, and therefore this report cannot presume to be a comprehensive analysis of the information technology requirements posed by crisis management.3 Nor is it an effort aimed at identifying immediate solutions (or ways of funding and deploying them). Rather, it examines opportunities for engaging the information technology research and crisis management communities in longer-term research activities of mutual interest and illustrates substantive and process issues relating to collaboration between them.
The organization and content of this report approximately follow that of the workshop. For clarity of presentation, the committee has in several instances aggregated sessions in this reporting. Also, where possible, related points drawn from throughout the workshop have been combined into consolidated discussions. In preparing this summary, the committee has drawn on the contributions of speakers, panelists, and participants in the workshop, who provided a rich set of illustrations of the role of information technology in crisis management, issues regarding its use, possible research opportunities, and process and implementation issues related to such research. Workshop participants and reviewers of the report provided clarification and additional examples subsequent to the workshop. To these the committee has added some additional context-setting material and examples. But this summary report remains primarily a reporting on the presentations and discussions at the workshop.
Synthesis of the workshop experience into a more general, broader set of findings and recommendations for information technology research in the digital government context is deferred to the main report from this committee. This second phase of the project will draw on the two workshops organized by the study committee, as well as additional briefings and other work on the topic of digital government, to develop a final synthesis report that will provide recommendations for refining the NSF's Digital Government program and providing more broad-based advice across the government in this arena.
3The interagency ITCM team is working to develop such requirements.
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Support for this project came from NSF and NASA. The committee acknowledges Larry Brandt of the NSF and Anngienetta Johnson of NASA along with the other members of the interagency Information Technology for Crisis Management team for their encouragement and support of this project. This is a reporting of workshop discussions, and the committee thanks all participants for their insights expressed in the workshop presentations, discussions, breakout sessions, and subsequent interactions.
The committee also wishes to thank the CSTB staff for their assistance with the workshop and the preparation of the report. Jon Eisenberg, CSTB program officer, made significant contributions to the organization of the workshop and the assembly of the report. His excellent facilitation, hard work, and valuable insights were pivotal in producing this report. Jane Bortnick Griffith, interim CSTB director in 1998, played a key role in helping conceive and initiate this project. The committee also thanks Rita Gaskins, who assisted in organizing committee meetings, marshalling committee members, organizing the workshop, and preparing the report. Finally, the committee is grateful to the reviewers for helping to sharpen and improve the report through their comments. Responsibility for the report remains with the committee.
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Acknowledgment of Reviewers
This report was reviewed by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council's (NRC's) Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the authors and the NRC in making the published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The contents of the review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their participation in the review of this report:
Charles N. Brownstein, Corporation for National Research Initiatives,
Melvyn Ciment, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies,
David Cowen, University of South Carolina,
David J. Farber, University of Pennsylvania,
Andrew C. Gordon, University of Washington,
John R. Harrald, George Washington University,
John D. Hwang, City of Los Angeles Information Technology Agency,
David Maier, Oregon Graduate Institute,
Lois Clark McCoy, National Institute for Urban Search and Rescue,
Thomas O'Keefe, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection,
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John Poindexter, Syntek, and
Gio Wiederhold, Stanford University.
Although the individuals listed above provided many constructive comments and suggestions, responsibility for the final content of this report rests solely with the study committee and the NRC.
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