JCSCW 2013 - Special Issue on Crisis Informatics and Collaboration

Springer International Journal on Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (JCSCW):
Special Issue on Crisis Informatics and Collaboration
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Guest Editors: Volkmar Pipek, Sophia Liu, Andruid Kerne
Submission of Abstracts: January 15, 2013 (for review organization)
Submission of Full Papers: February 28, 2013
Major crises and disasters like the September 11th attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the Sendai earthquake is a ripe domain for CSCW concerns as they typically involve collaboration among individuals, organizations and society as a whole during all phases of emergency management, from initial planning and preparedness, through the detection of a crisis event, and into the response, recovery and mitigation phases. In many crisis scenarios, the quality of the collaboration among governmental, professional, volunteer, and citizen responders in crisis management greatly affects the impact on loss of lives and property.
Crisis Informatics takes an interdisciplinary perspective on the socio-technical, informational and collaborative aspects of developing and using technologies and information systems in the context of the full disaster lifecycle?preparation, warning, impact, response, recovery, and mitigation phases. Crisis Informatics views emergency management as a socio-technical system where information is disseminated within and among official and public channels and entities. Crisis informatics also wrestles with methodological concerns as it strives to develop socially- and behaviorally-informed theories, policies, and development of information and communication technology (ICT). As the challenges of crisis management grow more complex from the increase in vulnerability to hazards of all types, the opportunities to collaborate using a rapidly growing set of ICTs and collaborative technologies (e.g., social networking sites, mobile devices, location-aware services, crowdsourcing systems, web-based systems, etc.) urge us to find new ways of understanding, conceptualizing and evaluating possible use cases for these collaborative technologies in emergency management and response. ‘Collaborative Resilience' strategies can help improve collaboration quality but such strategies and the ICTs being developed and used in crisis situations need to be explored in terms of describing and exchanging good practices, designing appropriate coordination mechanisms, and offering technological support for collaboration across organizational borders.
For this Special Issue of the Journal on Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (JCSCW) on “Crisis Informatics and Collaboration,” we invite research papers from multiple disciplines with the focus on pursuing scientific questions around Crisis Informatics topics. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
? User experience studies and design approaches of presenting, visualizing, and interacting with social media data, crowdsourcing systems, crisis mapping applications, virtual communities, networked organizations, etc. that facilitate collaboration in crisis management;
? Studies and human-centered design approaches of interorganizational coordination mechanisms, technological concepts and prototypes, and participatory development of emergency management technology that support collaboration in crisis situations;
? Critical studies, methodological considerations, and design approaches of collaborative systems that address ethical, legal, and social issues including security and privacy issues in developing, using, and researching emergency management information systems that involve collaborations between governmental, professional, volunteer, and citizen responders in crisis management;
? Theoretical considerations regarding collaborative resilience and emergency response as a socio-technical system, as well as studies of and concepts for establishing and supporting ‘collaborative resilience’ that involve collaborative services and technologies to improve the resilience of cities, infrastructures, logistic chains, etc. through public-private partnerships.
? Studies and design approaches of serious games and gamification of crisis management applications for emergency response training, raising awareness, and conducting research;
? Case Studies from practitioners explaining uses of collaborative technologies in the field and discussing potential solutions and real-world applications to give insights into best practices and lessons learned;
? Different international perspectives of socio-cultural differences in uses of collaborative ICTs and participatory decision-making in crisis management.
Deadlines / Schedule:
Submission of Abstracts: January 15, 2013 (for review organization)
Submission of Full Papers: February 28, 2013
Review Deadline: April 29, 2013
Notifications to the Authors: May 22, 2013
Final Version Deadline: July 1, 2013
Online Publication: August 2013 (printed edition to be scheduled by Springer)
Submission Guidelines
This special issue will include 7-10 full papers. Abstracts can be sent to any of the editors via email by January 15, 2013. Manuscripts of about 8,000 - 10,000 words should be submitted by February 28, 2013. Authors must prepare manuscripts according to the standards of the International Journal on CSCW (see http://www.springerlink.com/content/0925-9724/ and http://www.editorialmanager.com/cosu/) and submit the manuscript via the JCSCW Editorial Manager Online Site under “SI: Collaboration and Crisis Informatics”.
Guest Editors Contact Information
Volkmar Pipek, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor CSCW in Organisations/Fac. III
Universitaet Siegen, Hoelderlinstr. 3, 57068 Siegen
Tel: +49 271 740 4068
Email: volkmar.pipek-AT-uni-siegen.de
Sophia B. Liu, Ph.D.
USGS Mendenhall Research Fellow
U.S. Geological Survey
1711 Illinois Street, Room 543
Golden, Colorado 80401-1865
Tel: 303-273-8649
Email: sophialiu-AT-usgs.gov
Andruid Kerne, Ph.D.
Director, Interface Ecology Lab
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3112
Tel: 979.845.0024
Email: andruid-AT-cse.tamu.edu