Remote Communication in Wilderness Search and Rescue: Implications for the Design of Emergency Distributed-Collaboration Tools for Network-Sparse Environments

Brennan Jones, Anthony Tang, and Carman Neustaedter. (2020). Remote Communication in Wilderness Search and Rescue: Implications for the Design of Emergency Distributed-Collaboration Tools for Network-Sparse Environments. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 4, GROUP, 10: 28 pages.

Abstract

Wilderness search and rescue (WSAR) requires careful communication between workers in different locations. To understand the contexts from which WSAR workers communicate and the challenges they face, we interviewed WSAR workers and observed a mock-WSAR scenario. Our findings illustrate that WSAR workers face challenges in maintaining a shared mental model. This is primarily done through distributed communication using two-way radios and cell phones for text and photo messaging; yet both implicit and explicit communication suffer. WSAR workers send messages for various reasons and share different types of information with varying levels of urgency. This warrants the use of multiple communication modalities and information streams. However, bringing in more modalities introduces the risk of information overload, and thus WSAR workers today still primarily communicate remotely via the radio. Our work demonstrates opportunities for technology to provide implicit communication and awareness remotely, and to help teams maintain a shared mental model even when synchronous realtime communication is sparse. Furthermore, technology should be designed to bring together multiple streams of information and communication while making sure that they are presented in ways that aid WSAR workers rather than overwhelming them.

Materials

PDF File (http://hcitang.org/papers/2020-group2020-wsar.pdf)
DOI (https://doi.org/10.1145/3375190)

Keywords

Search and rescue, outdoors, team communication, distributed collaboration, awareness

BibTeX

@article{jones2020wsar,
  author = {Jones, Brennan and Tang, Anthony and Neustaedter, Carman},
  journal = {Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction},
  keywords = {Search and rescue, outdoors, team communication, distributed collaboration, awareness},
  pages = {28 pages},
  pdfurl = {http://hcitang.org/papers/2020-group2020-wsar.pdf},
  title = {Remote Communication in Wilderness Search and Rescue: Implications for the Design of Emergency Distributed-Collaboration Tools for Network-Sparse Environments},
  type = {journal},
  volume = {4, GROUP},
  number = {10},
  year = {2020},
  doi = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3375190}
}