Planning, Foresight and Risk Analysis

We are interested in any approaches or methodologies for Planning, Foresight, and Risk analysis that would aid in the improvement of any Emergency Preparedness or Management Process.  This would include the integration of the results into other phases such as mitigation, detection, evaluation, response, and recovery.  Of particular interest are improved methods and ways to integrate volunteer individuals, decision makers, civilian, responders and local organizations into planning, foresight and/or risk analysis activities.  This includes planning for adding these participatory resources to any phase of Emergency Preparedness and Management.  Case studies are very welcome provided they contain insights for potential improvements in any aspects of planning or foresight in Emergency Management.  Improving the effectiveness of collaborative planning, resiliency, and actual collaboration among the many diverse organizations involved in emergency situations is also a valid topic.  In this sense, new forecasting approaches for anticipating and analyzing potential cascading effects and supporting multi-risk analysis in crisis situations will be very welcomed.  These methodological efforts will be especially adequate for the subject of the track when they integrate both quantitative and qualitative data and are aimed at improving the emergency planning process.

TRACK TOPICS

  • Mitigation options in Planning
  • Foresight/Forecasting Methods and Systems
  • Elicitation and analysis of risk information
  • Determining and estimating future threats
  • Use of Information systems for predicting risks
  • Forecasting methods for analyzing cascading effects in crisis situations
  • Quantitative and qualitative data integration for supporting Risk Analysis
  • Planning of new systems and methodologies
  • Scenario generation methods as planning and/or training tools
  • Foresight, Planning, and Risk Analysis integration
  • Citizen Participation into Emergency Planning Activities

TRACK CO-CHAIRS

Murray Turoff
New Jersey Institute of Technology

Murray Turoff is a retired Distinguished Professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) who was a key founding father of computer-mediated communication.

Turoff developed the Emergency Management Information System and Reference Index (EMISARI), the electronic information and communication system that guided the US government's response to emergencies through much of the 1970s and '80s.

The EMISARI network, established in 1971, included what many consider the first instant messaging system, and Turoff was an early theorist of computer-mediated communications and proponent of "computer conferencing" -- a term he may have coined.

Turoff worked on 1960s-era computerized nuclear war games for US defense, and developed the Policy Delphi technique, a modification of the Delphi Method for use in policy analysis and decision-making. Turoff and his wife and frequent collaborator, Dr. Starr Roxanne Hiltz, are both professors at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Turoff co-founded the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) community.He currently holds the title Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Information Systems Department at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

He has authored or co-authored 8 books including The Network Nation (with his wife Starr Roxanne Hiltz) which won the TSM Award of the Association of American Publishers for the Best Technical Publication in 1978 which went on to become the defining document and standard reference of its time for the field of computer mediated communication.

Victor A. Bañuls
Pablo de Olavide University

Dr. Victor A. Bañuls is Associate Professor of Management Information Systems at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide (UPO) at Seville (Spain). He also has served as visiting research scholar at the UFRJ (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), CIEM (Kristiansand, Norway), New Jersey institute of Technology (NJ, U.S.A.) and Tilburg University (Tilburg, The Netherlands). Before his current position, Dr. Bañuls has been working as financial, quality and information systems manager. He has participated in several national and international research projects. His research is published in journals such as Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Technovation, EAAI, IEEE SMC and Futures (among others), being editor of two books. Recently he has being guest editor of the journals TFSC, Upgrade and Novatica. He has been co-chair of the track “Foresight, Planning and Risk Analysis in Emergency Management” at the ISCRAM conference since 2010 being member. He is member of the board of ISCRAM and chair of the Publications and Academic Standards Committee since 2014. Recently he become the Co-Editor in Chief of the International Journal of ISCRAM.