Tutorial: Emergency Management Information Systems – EMIS (Full-day Tutorial)
Leaders: Murray Turoff, Starr Roxanne Hiltz  and  Bartel Van deWalle

Appropriate for both researchers and practitioners who desire an overview of EMIS, this tutorial will review the basics of design requirements and consider current evaluation research and findings. It will be based upon a recently completed book (Van deWalle, B., Turoff, M. and Hiltz, S. R. eds. Information Systems for Emergency Management 2009) with demonstrations of some current systems and updates on selected case studies. Major topics include:

• Design challenges and requirements for all phases of EM – Turoff

• EMIS in humanitarian operations– Van de Walle

• Evaluations of EMIS, with focus on Social Networking System Applications– Hiltz

• Emerging trends in EMIS, with discussion of research and teaching issues

Murray Turoff (turoff@njit.edu) designed and developed the first collaborative EMIS in 1971 and has been an academic and researcher in related areas since 1973. Since 2004 he turned his attention back to EMIS and has been very active in recent years in research in this area. His research interests include Foresight and Planning, Management of IS, Computer Mediated Communications and Delphi Design.

Starr Roxanne Hiltz (hiltz@njit.edu) is currently Distinguished Professor Emerita, NJIT and the 2008-2009 Fulbright/ University of Salzburg Distinguished Chair in Communications and Media. Her research interests include virtual teams and online communities, Asynchronous Learning Networks, Emergency Response Information Systems, Pervasive Computing, and the applications and impacts of “social computing” (“Web 2.0”).

Bartel Van deWalle (bartel@uvt.nl) is associate professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands and a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow. His research interests span decision support systems, decision analysis, high reliability theory, and humanitarian information systems. He is founder of the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) Community (http://www.iscram.org) and has organized special sessions, workshops, conferences and summer schools in this area in Europe, the USA and China.