DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A TRANSACTIVE MEMORY SYSTEM PROTOTYPE FOR GEO-COLLABORATIVE CRISIS MANAGEMENT

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DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A TRANSACTIVE MEMORY SYSTEM PROTOTYPE FOR GEO-COLLABORATIVE CRISIS MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT

Crisis management in today’s technologically mediated world is a challenging task that requires the encoding, storing and retrieval of large amounts of knowledge and information far beyond the capabilities of the individual mind. Systems developed to serve the information needs of crisis management should therefore accommodate the distributed nature of work in this context. Crisis management personnel often work in teams and their activities are shaped based on their interactions with each other as well as their environment. Moreover, crisis management teams tend to develop idiosyncrasies in organizing their own knowledge thereby hindering future possibilities of communication or coordination with external agencies. Keeping this in mind, the research described in this thesis considers the cognitive activities of the team in designing relevant technology for crisis management. Transactive memory is a theory put forward by Daniel Wegner in an effort to understand the group mind. The theory asserts that groups would succeed in achieving their collective tasks better if they can emphasize specialization into the work through accurate expertise judgment and thus continuously reconcile an evolving and disparate knowledge base for the common benefit of the group. This thesis will thus use the transactive memory approach in designing a prototypical decision-support system for crisis management personnel.

 

Chapter 1

 

Introduction

Group organization in a crisis situation can be understood to include both emergency crews and the knowledge of the community where the crisis event takes place. Crisis management personnel must communicate and coordinate with each other while sharing information about multiple constructs of the evolving situation. This can include a number of challenges concerning both the coordination of different groups of agencies spanning law-enforcement and public safety agencies. To this end, transactive memory exists as groups of people interact with others to access, store or retrieve joint memories that represent historic or situational knowledge (Wegner, 1987). Transactive memory is a key element in communication, as it directs an individual in search of information to a precise and relevant source. In other words, transactive memory could be described as a means to acquire information about “who knows what” (Wegner, 1987, 1995) in a particular situation. Transactive memory is therefore especially well suited for managing information across disparate domains of knowledge. Thus the effectiveness of a response effort that subsumes multiple teams and agencies of responders depends on the amount of transactive memory created. To this end, this thesis studies the design and development of a prototypical decision support information system that can be used by crisis management personnel to engage in the effective management of resources and personnel.

1.1        Transactive Memory

Transactive memory exists as groups of people interact with others to access, store or retrieve joint memories that represent historic or situational knowledge. (Shapiro et.al. 2008)Originally proposed by Daniel Wegner in his 1987 paper titled “Transactive Memory: A Contemporary: Analysis of the Group Mind(Wegner 1987), Wegner acknowledged the unique nature of the group mind which he termed as being constructed by the distinct components of individual memories along with the interactions amongst people holding such memories. Transactive memory is thus a theory that aims to predict group behavior based on the processes by which the group makes sense of incoming information.

 

As Wegner says, the “encoding, storage and retrieval stages” are significant stages of how individuals make sense of, and organize, incoming memory. In brief, encoding is the process of information entering the mind, it is the act of individual perception on how individuals may consume the information around them. Storage is the stage, where the information may be organized based on certain identifiers for future use and re-use while retrieval is described as the process by which and individual may make use of their stored memory capacities in retrieving relevant information for the task at hand. Wegner furthers his analysis of individual memory by emphasizing the importance of meta-memory. Meta-memory can be explained as a person’s awareness of their own memory capabilities. In the context of Crisis management, meta-memory is especially important since it alludes to the awareness of the capabilities within an agency. Thus lawenforcement, fire Emergency Medicine and Hazmat amongst others, must function with a comprehensive understanding of the capabilities they possess in responding to various incidents. A lack of meta-knowledge of your own capabilities would lead adverse performance issues.

Another important concept that Wegner uses as a run-up to transactive Memory is how people use their internal and external memories in explaining their cognitive activities. Remembering something, as Wegner puts it, is characterized fundamentally by a label along with the memory item, i.e. the item to be remembered. But in many cases, people tend not to remember the memory item but instead create location pointers to artifacts of external storage to help them remember extensive amounts of information. A simple example being, how people would tend to remember telephone numbers. The use of a telephone directory or a book illustrates the usage of an artifact of external storage while the individual would remember the title of the phone number (a person’s name) along with a location pointer (the telephone book or where it has been kept). This tuple of label and item along with the combination of our internal and external memory strategies are the fundamental characteristics of how individual memory operates.

While individuals use external storage objects to remember something, a group may use individuals as external storage objects to “collectively remember”. Thus the transactive quality of individual memory is the distinct element in understanding how

the group may remember together”.

 

 

 

  • Transactive encoding, the process of the group discussing incoming information and developing methods to manipulate the incoming information in a manner that the entire group understands. Transactive encoding may also be performed by a direct instruction by a group member for another member to remember something (this can be applied to more structured groups operating under a specific authoritarian structure or chain of command).
  • Transactive retrieval may be undertaken successfully when a group member may rely on the memory or expertise of another member in retrieving specific information. Here the fundamental characteristics of individual memory come into play where one group member may know part of the information internally but utilizes the internally stored memory item of another group member to complete the retrieval process.

 

The Transactive Memory System (TMS) is thus a system constructed as a result of the transactive processes of individual members of group constantly communicating and relying on each other’s internally stored memory items over time. The maturity of the group is an important construct of an effective transactive memory system that depends on communication and interdependence of the members of the group. For example groups that have worked together or have been in each other’s company for prolonged periods of time have some knowledge and understanding of how the other members of the group function.

Transactive memory is a key element in communication, as it directs an individual in search of information to a precise and relevant source. In other words, transactive memory could be described as a means to acquire information about “who knows what” (Wegner 1987, 1995) in a particular situation. Transactive memory is therefore especially well suited for managing information across disparate domains of knowledge. Thus the theory of transactive memory is well-suited to inform the design of a decision-support system for crisis management. Specific relevance of transactive memory to group-work in Crisis management is explained later in this chapter.

1.2        Common Operational Picture

Working groups solving problems together often need to achieve a common consensus on the important elements of the problem. This common understanding is necessary so that decision-making for an evolving and complex situation can be effectively enabled if knowledge about the situation is aggregated onto a common space for all the decision-makers to make use of collectively.  The centralization of information that facilitates such convergent processes is referred to as the common operational picture (COP). A COP is first and foremost a visual representation; it is a structurally emergent artifact that visually illustrates the relevant information characterizing the situation. (USJFCOM, 2008). A COP is most useful when multiple groups operating under a multi-level organizational structure require quickly accessible and actionable knowledge to rapidly make decisions.

The COP like transactive memory is also a constructed object that can be traced to the underlying structural entities of an organization.  The emphasis, in a COP, is on the representation of information that is relevant to the development of a common understanding within the group. This heavily ties in with transactive memory and thus the effective working of groups communicating with each other. The overlap being, that an effective transactive system requires that information entering a group be labeled appropriately in a manner consistent with overall group understanding, Wegner suggests that the labeling of information must take on the notion of a Common Denominator to categorize different information (such as operational, strategic and tactical information) such that the group may use more of this information effectively (Anderson et. al. 1979).

1.3       Relevance to Crisis Management

Crisis management almost always involves teams of individuals working together not only amongst themselves but also in collaboration with other teams (McNeese et. al. 2004). Complex incidents require rapid response activity from local, state and sometimes, even federal crisis management agencies. The necessity to respond rapidly presents itself as a challenge to systems design in terms of decision making, information management and collaboration. The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has played an important role in determining the successful outcome of various response activities but off-late with the tragedies in the 9/11 disaster, the Katrina Hurricane and the more recent, floods of the mid-west – the need for various crisis agencies to interact, communicate and work with each other has grown significantly. This thesis doesn’t argue that transactive memory is a panacea for managing a full-scale crisis but aims to design a Decision Support System predicated on how teams of people think and moreover, how

interoperability can be effectively achieved amongst multiple levels of organization and authority.

1.4        Organization of thesis

The remainder of this thesis describes the following in detail. Chapter 2 will provide further background and context of relevant areas of work. Chapter 3 reviews the existing literature and similar studies consistent with transactive memory, other models of group performance, Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Chapter 4 elucidates the theoretical contributions made through this thesis by explaining the original concept of nested-transactive memory for Interoperability in crisis management agencies. Chapter 5 details the transactive memory prototype in explicit detail. Chapter 6 reviews the methodology employed in studying this domain as well as details semi-structured interviews conducted discussing the prototype. Chapter 7 serves to analyze the data collected and discusses improvements in terms of providing recommendations for re-design as well as theoretical amendments. Chapter 8 provides insight for future research opportunities. Finally, Chapter 9 concludes this

thesis.

1.5        Summary of contributions

The research described in this thesis has accomplished the following:

  • This thesis has extended the transactive memory theory by applying it specifically to the emergency and crisis management context by proposing the nested-transactive memory model. (Refer Chapter 4)
  • This thesis has developed a prototypical transactive memory system that provides features to assist decision making at emergency operation centers

(EOC). (Refer Chapter 5)

  • A qualitative evaluation through semi-structured interviews of experts in the emergency/crisis management has been conducted with IRB approval.

To this end, the data collected has been analyzed. (Refer Chapter 6)

  • The analysis of the data provides specific recommendations for the redesign of the prototypical transactive memory system with the objective of reflecting a more naturalistic design. Additionally theoretical implications are also discussed (Refer Chapter 7)
  • Lastly, future opportunities of research predicated on the work in this thesis are discussed by describing future opportunities to extend transactive memory as well as explore the domains of information fusion and mobile device support through spatial annotation.

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A TRANSACTIVE MEMORY SYSTEM PROTOTYPE FOR GEO-COLLABORATIVE CRISIS MANAGEMENT

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