Collaboration Research for Crisis Management Teams

To aid research in crisis management, we reviewed the literature pertaining to synchronous, non-collocated, cross-organizational, time-sensitive collaboration. We examined the theoretical constructs that researchers have proposed for collaborative systems and determined that several of these, such as common ground and awareness theory, have particular applicability to crisis management. We reviewed collaboration models that were developed to provide frameworks for understanding the multiple facets of technological support to group work. Because teams normally need to come to a common understanding of the situation and the relevant decisions, we examined research in team awareness, sensemaking and decision-making. Types of group tasks affect technology use and adoption, so we considered the literature surrounding these topics, as well, before turning to case studies of new collaboration technologies. We end with our assessment of the findings most relevant to developing new crisis management collaboration approaches, including procedures, needed functionality, and candidate capabilities.