Date of Conferral

11-12-2024

Degree

Doctor of Information Technology (D.I.T.)

School

Information Systems and Technology

Advisor

Jon McKeeby

Abstract

Emergency management leaders face challenges building common operating pictures (COPs) to display and share critical information, foster collaboration, and improve decision-making among response teams during crises. Without evidence-based strategies to help curb those challenges, poorly implemented COPs can impede situational awareness, decision making, and undermine efforts to get critically needed resources to populations in need. Grounded in a multi-theory model conceptual framework that leveraged the formulation of SA, decision making, and cognitive load psychology, this pragmatic qualitative inquiry explored the strategies that emergency management leaders use to implement the display and sharing of data in COPs to enhance the effectiveness of the decision-making process. Semistructured interviews of eight seasoned emergency management IT leaders from a subset of the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency's Eastern Region, together with 26 publicly accessible industry documents, provided the data points for the study. The data were thematically analyzed, and four themes emerged: role-based structure and responsibilities alignment, adaptive information display and seamless sharing, preparedness, and awareness-focused performance, comprehensive data sourcing, and information display. A key recommendation for emergency management IT leaders is to focus on tailoring COP data displays to specific user roles and responsibilities. The implications for positive social change include the potential to enhance communication, cooperation, and coordination among responders by improving the display and sharing of data in COPs.

Download

Share

 
COinS