Social and mobile computing open up new possibilities for integrating citizens' information, knowledge, and social capital in emergency management (EM). This participation can improve the capacity of local agencies to respond to unexpected events by involving citizens not only as first line informants, but also as first responders. This participation could contribute to build resilient communities aware of the risks they are threatened by and able to mobilize their social capital to cope with them and, in turn, decrease the impact of threats and hazards. However for this participation to be possible organizations in charge of EM need to realize that involving citizens does not interfere with their protocols and that citizens are a valuable asset that can contribute to the EM process with specific skills and capabilities. In this paper we discuss the design challenges of using social and mobile computing to move to a more participatory EM process that starts by empowering both citizens and organizations in a coproduction service envisioned as a partnership effort. As an example, we describe a case study of a participatory design approach that involved professional EM workers and decision makers in an effort to understand the challenges of using technology-based solutions to integrate citizen skills and capabilities in their operation protocols. The case study made it possible to identify specific roles that citizens might play in a crisis or disaster and to envision scenarios were technologies could be used to integrate their skills into the EM process. In this way the paper contributes to the roles and the scenarios of theory-building about coproduction in EM services.

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When an emergency occurs, citizens can be a helpful support for the operation centers involved in the response activities. As witnesses to a crisis, they initially can share updated and detailed information about what is going on. Moreover, thanks to the current technological evolution people are able to quickly and easily gather rich information and transmit it through different communication channels. Indeed, modern mobile devices embed several sensors such as GPS receivers, Wi-Fi, accelerometers or cameras that can transform users into well-equipped human sensors. For these reasons, emergency organizations and small and medium enterprises have demonstrated a growing interest in developing smart applications for reporting any exceptional circumstances. In this paper, we present a practical study about this kind of applications for identifying both limitations and common features. Based on a study of relevant existent contributions in this area and our personal direct experience in developing and evaluating emergency management solutions, our aim is to propose several findings about how to design effective and efficient mobile emergency notification applications. For this purpose we have exploited the basic sensors of modern mobile devices and the users’ aptitude for using them. The evaluation consists of a practical and a theoretical part. In the practical part, we have simulated a traffic accident as closely as possible to a real scenario, with a victim lying on the ground near a car in the middle of a street. For the theoretical part, we have interviewed some emergency experts for collecting their opinions about the utility of the proposed solution. Results from this evaluation phase confirm the positive impact that EN application have for both operators’ and citizens’ perspective. Moreover, we collected several findings useful for future design challenges in the same area, as shown in the final redesign of the proposed application.

In this paper it is advocated that the feedback loop between students and lecturer could be improved by making use of Augmented Reality (AR) techniques. The bidirectional communication teacher-students is sometimes hampered by students' fear of showing themselves up in front of their classmates. In order to overcome this problem a system is proposed whereby lecturers receive immediate and private feedback both individualised for each student as well as aggregated for the whole class. With that purpose the lecturer, who is equipped with a head mounted AR display, can visualize symbols that student select to represent their status in relation to the lecture content. In order to explore the possibilities of this approach an experience was conducted in a lecture on a university course. The results are encouraging and suggest that as this technology matures and less intrusive AR display models become available, it could provide effective support to communication and interaction during lectures.

a b s t r a c tResponse to large scale emergencies is a cooperative process that requires the active and coordinated participation of a variety of functionally independent agencies operating in adjacent regions. In practice, this essential cooperation is sometimes not attained or is reduced due to poor information sharing, non fluent communication flows, and lack of coordination. We report an empirical study of IT mediated cooperation among Spanish response agencies and we describe the challenges of adoption, information sharing, com munication flows, and coordination among agencies that do not share a unity of command. We analyze three strategies aimed at supporting acceptance and surmounting political, organizational and personal distrust or skepticism: participatory design, advanced collab orative tools inducing cognitive absorption, and end user communities of practice.