Project COPE: Development and Evaluation of a Technology Concept in Emergency Response Domain Paula Savioja, Leena Norros, Marja Liinasuo VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland BAE Systems (United Kingdom) BAE Systems C-ITS (Sweden) TCD, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) UTI Group (Romania) GMV-Skysoft (Portugal) CESS, Centre for European Security Strategies (Germany) IGSU, General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations (Romania) ESC, Emergency Services College (Finland)

http://cope.vtt.fi

Objectives of the COPE Project •

Exploration and development of a technology concept – Using COTS products as much as possible – Demo-level maturity: no fine-tuning of reliability or usability

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Identifying functionalities that would – Improve emergency management by better command and control performance. – Increase situational awareness among the stakeholders involved – Enhance both horizontal and vertical information flow to and from a first responder.

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The development of the technology was to be done in a usage centred manner – Equal amounts of work were allocated to technology development and human factors and evaluation – Altogether three HF teams participated and two end user organisations

Domain characteristics: Constraints and Possibilities •

Safety critical – Ethnography, contextual inquiry etc. methodologies not possible due to risks and possibly even endangering objectives of activity – Extensive training can be used for research purposes, de-briefings – Experts available for interviews

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Activity is highly procedural and practices are completely internalized by the actors – Much information about the activity and reasoning for it in tacit format – Resistance to accept any technology that would drastically change prevailing practices – On the other hand it is dynamic in nature, every accident is always a new one

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Extremely strong professional culture – Shared values and motives in the community – Reluctant attitude towards interventions in general

Methodical considerations

Methods that were used •

Understanding user needs and familiarization with the activity: – Accident analysis reports – Procedure analysis – Observation of training – Role playing – Critical Decision Method (CDM) interviews (completed with a final sweep concerning technical possibilities)

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Design process – Mapping between user needs and technological possibilities, scenarios – Design experiments (user participation)

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Evaluation of the technology concept: – Parallel augmented exercise (PAX) – Debriefing workshops – Questionnaires Pooled up in a usability case for proof of concept

Observation of training 1

Observation of training 2

Observation of training 3

Benefits of observing training • Avoid the risks in observation of actual work • Control over the scenarios – Complexity, dynamism etc.

• Accessibility to different scenarios • Access to trainer’s knowledge and expertise – Trainer is encouraged to explicate his expertise • • • •

What is considered good practice of a fire fighting team What are the most critical performance indicators in each scenario How a performance of the students is evaluated In which parts of the activity he feels that most students encounter problems, what is most difficult in the particular scenario

Parallel augmented exercise

Parallel augmented exercise • The idea in the method: – Students carry out (a complicated) exercise with normal tools and practices – Expert users use the technology (augmented operational picture) and observe students conducting a scenario – Experts reflect: ”If I new the concentration of ammonium was this high I would set the danger zone way further. They must have misjudged the threat in the situation”

• Introducing the technology concept to the users in a nonintrusive way – Did not interfere with the training of the students – Gave the experts a possibility to reflect the potential of the new tools – Technical immaturity of the system did not matter

Conclusion •

In COPE several ICT functionalities were found promising – Helmet mounted infrared camera with recording and live streaming of the video – In-door positioning integrated in maps – Hazardous material concentration level detection – Cloud estimation

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In COPE project all the HF methods were tuned to comply with the constraints and possibilities of the domain Tuning involved adding a mediating layer to the methods – Simulations – Trainers – Experts – Recall of lived incidents – Etc.

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Thank You! VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland BAE Systems (United Kingdom) BAE Systems C-ITS (Sweden) TCD, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) UTI Group (Romania) GMV-Skysoft (Portugal) CESS, Centre for European Security Strategies (Germany) IGSU, General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations (Romania) ESC, Emergency Services College (Finland)

http://cope.vtt.fi