Identifying and Supporting Information Needs in Mass Casualty Incidents – an Interdisciplinary Approach

In mass
casualty incidents (MCIs) different authorities and organizations with safety
responsibilities (BOS) act in highly dynamic  situations. BOS operating in
MCI-scenarios have a large demand of different information. SpeedUp, a German
government-funded  research project, wants to support this information demand. From
an IT-perspective, our basic concept is to model available  resources (e.g.,
sources of information and communicative devices) as services and flexibly
combine them to the information  demand of the BOS. To achieve this, we have to
know which kind of information is needed by whom and explore the structures, 
tasks and roles of the BOS involved. In this paper we employed an
interdisciplinary and user – centered approach. It is the result of  a close
cooperation of two research groups: one from the Intercultural Business
Communication (IWK) and one from the chair of  computer sciences. While the IWK
focused on identifying information needs via expert interviews and observations,
the computer  scientists were looking at the possibilities for technical support
of these needs. Only both disciplines together can achieve viable  solutions.