CfP Workshop on Applications of advanced technologies in the context of disaster relief @ I-ESA 2014

Hi All, 

I just stumbled over this workshop to be held at the I-ESA Conference, just in case somebody is spontaneous and wants to publish a paper there; DL is Dec. 20. 

This might also be a good place to promote the group, as it seems this conference/workshop has mutual people involved (also I am not sure I have seen their names at ISCRAM either, but that's only a subjective observation :-) ). 

Cheers, 
Sigi. 


Workshop on Applications of advanced technologies in the context of disaster relief
@ I-ESA (Interoperability for Enterprise Systems and Applications) - March, 24th-28th - Albi (France)

http://2014.i-esa.org/workshops/WS-description-t2-w2.pdf

Disaster relief (also called emergency relief or humanitarian assistance) is of vital interest for researchers, because it is confronted with many challenges, requiring innovative solutions. Much can be gained for researchers, but also for humanitarian agencies, who can seek advice on better ways of operating. This application to humanitarian aid and crisis management is a challenging issue. Indeed, humanitarian organizations differ from private companies in many ways. Firstly, this sector is historically focused only on immediate response, in essence the day to day work needed to attend people affected by disasters, the beneficiaries. Yet, such a focus has been criticised for fire--‐fighting and a lack of strategic thinking (Van Wassenhove, 2006). Furthermore, the sector has been facing high requirements for coordinating activities across humanitarian organisations including in setting up their supply chains ? yet according to Thomas and Kopczak, in 2005, only 56% of logisticians did this in practice. There is also a high turnover of staff, impeding strategic decision--‐making and reducing the possibilities to build knowledge on past experiences (Thomas and Kopcak, 2005). At the same time, decision--‐making needs to be quick, with high impact in terms of human live (Tomasini and Van Wassenhove, 2009; Charles et al., 2010). In the current situation, with humanitarian lacking the time and appropriate tools, it is difficult, if not impossible to collect data and devise new ways of operating. Humanitarian organizations, for example, have huge difficulties to build on past experiences, and often have to choose the first option they find because they need to take decisions quickly. Researchers are no doubt aware that the first step to ensure the success of applications in a specific field consists in producing a complete and representative model of the studied system. This alignment with reality is not easy to achieve though. This is particularly true in the humanitarian context, as in all new research areas, where researchers have difficulty identifying the right decision variables and parameters to be able to develop accurate and relevant models. At the same time, the uncertainty of the humanitarian operational environment does not facilitate data collection and analysis (Goncalves, 2008). This gap is true for many applications in the humanitarian sector (Charles, 2010), including research on ICT. The aim of this workshop is to underline the bottlenecks linked to ICT applications in the context of disaster relief and crisis management and propose ways forward. Papers presenting on--‐going projects in the sector are welcomed. Proposals may focus on application and/or standardization issues or concrete description of funded project results.


-- 
Sigmund Kluckner
Safety & Security Department, Information Management 
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH
sigmund.kluckner@ait.ac.at | T +43 50550-2873 | www.ait.ac.at

Received on Thursday, 14 November 2013 15:44:41 UTC