Tool Talks

Many people in the ISCRAM community design and/or build information systems. Either as research prototypes, or for real world applications. The final results are sometimes presented in ISCRAM conferences, but we usually don’t share our experience with the tools, languages, libraries, off-the-shelf components and services that were used to create these systems.

In this interactive track, authors are invited to share their experiences with a specific tool (library/service/framework etc.) that they used to build (a part of) an information system for crisis response and management.

TRACK FORMAT

Papers submitted to this track do not follow the standard research paper format. In this track we do not just want to hear about interesting tools but want to provide an opportunity to try them out. Tool talks will therefore have a mandatory practical component. During the conference, accepted papers will get a 45-minute time slot. This time is divided into three parts: A short 10-minute talk about the author’s experience with the tool, 5 minutes for questions and then a 30-minute lab-session in which participants can do one or multiple introductory exercises.

Papers have to include at least the following: A section describing the experience with the tool in the context of a crisis management related system. A motivation of why the authors believe the tool could be relevant for other researchers or designers. A section with exercises and instructions.

Submissions will be reviewed for relevance, clarity, and feasibility of the exercises.

Because of the longer time-slots and interactive component there can be only one or two talks in a session. Because of the practical element, the track would ideally be scheduled as the last session of a day. This will allow enthusiastic participants to continue working on the exercises after the session.

We welcome contributions from author’s who are either regular users of the presented tool, or who are the developers/vendors of the tool. Presented tools should be publicly available to try out. For proprietary tools this means there must be a free trial version.

TRACK TOPICS

The following topics are examples of tools that would be candidates for tool talks:

– A GIS library for integrating maps in an information system

– A tool for collecting and indexing large numbers of tweets

– A publish/subscribe framework to create real-time operating pictures

– A mesh-network library to create networked applications that don’t rely on infrastructure

TRACK CHAIRS

Bas Lijnse
Radboud University, Netherlands

Dr. Lijnse’s work focuses on dynamic workflows for crisis management, command and control, and programming languages, tools and frameworks to support these tasks. He has worked extensively with the Netherlands Coast Guard to develop task management strategies for search and rescue activities and implemented them in the iTasks TOP framework. Dr. Lijnse is a long time member of ISCRAM, having chaired the Research Methods track, among others.

Jürgen Moßgraber
Fraunhofer IOSB, Germany

His research interests include the design and implementation of web based information systems with state-of-the-art technologies. He has particular experience with the design of distributed systems handling large-scale databases and modern architectures for task-oriented systems with a service- and event-based approach. He led several System Architecture work packages in European research projects related to crisis management and early warning like PESCaDO, TRIDEC and SAFEWATER and now in the on-going H2020 interdisciplinary projects HERACLES and beAWARE.

Anastasios Karakostas
Centre for Research and Technology Hellas
Anastasios’s research interests include decision support systems, multimedia analysis and semantic information modeling and reasoning. Currently, he is the deputy coordinator and scientific manager of the H2020 DRS project beAWARE. He has also participated in numerous European and national research projects and is the author of more than 60 publications in refereed journals and international conference. He has been the chair of the 1st International Workshop on Intelligent Crisis Management Technologies for climate events - ICMT in ISCRAM 2018.