Social Media and Collaborative Systems for Crisis Management
A Special Issue of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM TOCHI).

Special issue editors: Starr Roxanne Hiltz (New Jersey Institute of Technology), Paloma Diaz (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), Gloria Mark (University of California, Irvine)
Important Dates

Deadline for Submissions: Extended! March 15, 2011
Reviews Due: April 15, 2011
Author Notification: May 15, 2011
Revised Version Due: August 1, 2011
Special Issue Published: TBD
Overview

Planning and response for large scale disasters usually require the cooperation of many different organizations located in different places. The convergence of information and communication technologies, the growth of the Internet including the mobile Internet, and the advent of technologies known under the general heading of Web 2.0 have all contributed to our ability to collaborate over great distances, both synchronously and asynchronously. Our aim in this special issue is to gather and summarize a set of empirical studies of the design and use of these approaches to support collaboration in crisis management and response, with implications for the design of future systems for crisis management. . Submitted papers should have an HCI and/ or CSCW focus. How might such collaboration technologies help:

* preparation for disasters?
* the crisis management team in their decision making on handling the event?
* the crisis management team in their interactions with a wide range of responders, government bodies, various publics and stakeholders and, of course, the victims and their families?
* all parties build a picture and share information about a developing crisis?
* widen the range of stakeholders who can join fully in handling the crisis and recovery?
* involve communities fully during the recovery phase to rebuild and return to normality?
* communities to work together, alongside but independently of government and non-governmental agencies, to inform and help themselves, co-ordinating citizen-led efforts?
* virtual teams and virtual communities to develop processes and software for emergency management and recovery?

If the paper is based on a study previously appearing in a conference proceedings, it should be substantially revised and expanded from the conference version. The submission should then include a note from the author(s) that points out these changes and additions. All submissions must be through the TOCHI web site: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tochi. The cover note should also explicitly state that the paper is being submitted for the special issue on Crisis Management.
Special Issue Topics

Papers are invited that provide rich description and/or evaluation of the actual design process and/ or use of novel web based and other systems for collaboration and/or widespread participation in any phase of emergency management, from initial planning and preparedness, through detection, response, and recovery phases. This might include, among others:

* Case studies of user participation/ design research in the design and evolution of such systems.
* Studies of the use by virtual teams or virtual communities or the general public of .social software. (e.g., social networking sites, knowledge gathering systems such as Wikimapia) in emergency management and response, with data collection methods ranging from laboratory experiments or field studies to qualitative case studies.
* Exploration and assessment of any problems that occur when virtual or partially distributed teams or the general public use information technology to coordinate disaster management related tasks, and how can they be resolved.
* Behavioral studies of collaboration which have implications for the use of networking and web technologies in crisis response and management, including experimental studies.
* New approaches and dedicated-platforms supporting virtual teams and collaboration in Crisis Management