Abstract

This thesis proposes a new digital collaborative system to support the fire department in coordination and planning during large scale operations. These types of operations require multiple people (often across multiple emergency organizations) to collaborate, communicate and improvise. Reviewing literature about emergency management and conversations with experts from the fire department revealed the opportunity to introduce a digital system into the current methods employed a the fire department. A central idea of the proposed system is sharing of operation-relevant information and working collaboratively on this information across the whole team and even outside organizations. The desired outcome is an improvement in the response to large scale emergencies by providing every person involved with the information they need as fast as possible. A concept for this proposed system was developed and is presented in detail. Based on this concept, a prototype was developed to perform user tests with people from the fire department. A fictive scenario was developed based on past scenarios that happened in reality and served as a testing ground for the user to be guided through. The result was positive and the basic concept was approved. The user test showed that the proposed system could have benefits in a variety of situations compared to the current methods. It also showed that the selection of functionality needs to be chosen well to both align with the needs of the users but still remain straightforward and easy to use in order to keep the mental effort of using the system in stressful situations as low as possible. Other potential challenges of the proposed system are discussed as well.

Results/Implementation/Project Description

Conclusion

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