Dataset Information

Technology and Information Sharing in Disaster Relief.

ABSTRACT: This paper seeks to examine the extent to which technological advances can enhance inter-organizational information sharing in disaster relief. Our case is the Virtual OSOCC (On-Site Operations Coordination Centre) which is a part of the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) under the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA). The online platform, which has been developing for more than a decade, provides a unique insight into coordination behaviour among disaster management agencies and individual actors. We build our study on the analysis of a complete database of user interaction including more than 20,000 users and 11,000 comments spread across approximately 300 disaster events. Controlling for types and severities of the events, location-specific vulnerabilities, and the overall trends, we find that the introduction of new features have led to increases in user activity. We supplement the data-driven approach with evidence from semi-structured interviews with administrators and key users, as well as a survey among all users specifically designed to capture and assess the elements highlighted by both interviews and data analysis.

SUBMITTER: Bjerge B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5008756 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Technology and Information Sharing in Disaster Relief.

Bjerge Benedikte B Clark Nathan N Fisker Peter P Raju Emmanuel E

PloS one 20160901 9

This paper seeks to examine the extent to which technological advances can enhance inter-organizational information sharing in disaster relief. Our case is the Virtual OSOCC (On-Site Operations Coordination Centre) which is a part of the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) under the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA). The online platform, which has been developing for more than a decade, provides a unique insight into coordination behaviour ...[more]

PMID: 27584053

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Project description:BackgroundSparse relative effectiveness evidence is a frequent problem in Health Technology Assessment (HTA). Where evidence directly pertaining to the decision problem is sparse, it may be feasible to expand the evidence-base to include studies that relate to the decision problem only indirectly: for instance, when there is no evidence on a comparator, evidence on other treatments of the same molecular class could be used; similarly, a decision on children may borrow-strength from evidence on adults. Usually, in HTA, such indirect evidence is either included by ignoring any differences ('lumping') or not included at all ('splitting'). However, a range of more sophisticated methods exists, primarily in the biostatistics literature. The objective of this study is to identify and classify the breadth of the available information-sharing methods.MethodsForwards and backwards citation-mining techniques were used on a set of seminal papers on the topic of information-sharing. Papers were included if they specified (network) meta-analytic methods for combining information from distinct populations, interventions, outcomes or study-designs.ResultsOverall, 89 papers were included. A plethora of evidence synthesis methods have been used for information-sharing. Most papers (n=79) described methods that shared information on relative treatment effects. Amongst these, there was a strong emphasis on methods for information-sharing across multiple outcomes (n=42) and treatments (n=25), with fewer papers focusing on study-designs (n=23) or populations (n=8). We categorise and discuss the methods under four 'core' relationships of information-sharing: functional, exchangeability-based, prior-based and multivariate relationships, and explain the assumptions made within each of these core approaches.ConclusionsThis study highlights the range of information-sharing methods available. These methods often impose more moderate assumptions than lumping or splitting. Hence, the degree of information-sharing that they impose could potentially be considered more appropriate. Our identification of four 'core' methods of information-sharing allows for an improved understanding of the assumptions underpinning the different methods. Further research is required to understand how the methods differ in terms of the strength of sharing they impose and the implications of this for health care decisions.

Project description:AimTo explore nurses' experiences in natural disaster response.BackgroundNurses are key to disaster response. There is a growing body of qualitative research exploring this emerging nursing issue. However, there is a need to synthesise and summarise this body of knowledge to identify the overarching elements of how nurses experience working in disaster situations to reflect on their experiences so that we may help shape future clinical practice, research and education.DesignQualitative meta-synthesis.MethodFollowing PROSPERO guidelines (Moher et al., 2015), an exhaustive and systematic literature search and quality appraisal was undertaken in December 2019 to reveal nurses' experiences during natural disaster response. Sandelowski and Barroso's systematic retrieval, analysis and interpretation of findings method was used to produce a meta-summary of findings from 10 papers evaluating experiences across 9 disasters. A meta-aggregation was used to synthesise the findings from the studies and was methodically quality assessed with PRISMA and CASP.ResultsOur findings aggregated data from 42 sub-themes, into the following four themes to capture nurses' experiences after responding to disasters. These included agile response; leadership and innovative problem solving; building resilience; positive communication and need for psychological/emotional support.DiscussionThis meta-synthesis provides evidence to illustrate nurses' resilience and leadership capabilities as means to manage and perceive their disaster relief response. Factors such as emotional intelligence, capacity to react to changing situations, to manage scant resources in extreme situations were highlighted in nurses practising in highly stressful environments. Managers can use these examples to support ways to improve disaster management policies, but also, to engage in support for their staff.Relevance to clinical practiceThe role of nursing staff in disaster rescue is receiving significant attention. Understanding nurses' experiences during disaster rescue can help future leaders to improve capacity to respond and nursing preparedness through education, training and management, but also for continuing emotional support after the event.

Dataset Information

Technology and Information Sharing in Disaster Relief.

Publications

Technology and Information Sharing in Disaster Relief.

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