Interactive Technologies for Emergency Management and Civil Protection

DATE: Monday, October 11th, 2010
PLACE: USI Università della Svizzera italiana, room SI-008, Informatics building (Via G. Buffi 13)
TIME: 15.30

ABSTRACT:
Emergency management is a cooperative,multifaceted and complex process that requires the active and coordinated participation of different kinds of agents, including governmental and non-governmental agencies and corps, communities, volunteers and citizens. Each of them has different goals, needs, expectations and purposes. Technology might help to improve the response and reduce damages as far as it is responsibly developed and deployed considering the needs and constraints of people (both as individuals and as members of communities) and agencies as well as the the sociopolitical, economical and cultural context where technology is being deployed. In this talk I will focus on some design principles and strategies to improve technology acceptance and I will review some of the projects developed in the DEI research Group, including information systems for inter-agency cooperation (like ARCE, SIGAME, SICLE, ESA6) and advanced interaction mechanisms to improve communication in emergency situations.

BIO:
Paloma Díaz is Full Professor in the Computer Science Department of University Carlos III de Madrid. She earns a degree and a doctorate both in Computer Science. She is the head of the LAB DEI research group that is focused on the design of Interactive Systems that make people's life and work easier. From 2007 to 2010 she was the Scientific Manager of the Services for IST research programme at MICINN. From 2007 to 2008 was Visiting Scholar in the Information Sciencie and Technology College (PSU, USA).
Her research concerns are web engineering and interaction design applied to e-learning and emergency management. She is coauthor of more than 100 publications, including books, chapters and papers and has leaded multiple projects regarding her research areas. Since 2000 she collaborates with the Civil Protection Department of the Spanish Ministry of Interior as ICT advisor and developing ICT projects. She served as vice-chair in the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technologies and as member of the program committee in International conferences and journals like ISCRAM, IEEE ICALT, ACM Interaction Design for Children, IEEE EDUCON, IEEE Transactions on Education or the International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. She has been Program Chair of IEEE ICALT 2008 and General Chair of IEEE VLHCC 2010.
Ignacio Aedo holds a Degree in Computer Science and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. He's currently full professor at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Escuela Politécnica Superior). His interests mainly focus on topics such as hypermedia, interactive systems in education, web systems, electronic books, development methodologies and information systems for emergency situations. In 1990, he started his research activity in the field of interactive systems on which he is still involved. He enjoyed a sabbatical year in CSCL of IST PSU during 07-08 academic year.  Since 2000 he collaborates with the Civil Protection Department of the Spanish Ministry of Interior and other Regional Departments as ICT advisor and developing ICT projects and he has coorganized several workshops about HCI and Emergencies in international conferences (ACM CHI and ISCRAM). He is Program Co-Chair of IEEE ICALT 2009 and 2011 and General Co-Chair of IEEE ICALT 2008. He currently is Adjunct Vice-Chancellor for Faculty and Departments and Director of Master of Web Engineering of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

HOST: Prof. Fabio Crestani