The Common Operational Picture as Collective Sensemaking Jeroen Wolbers* and Kees Boersma** *Department of Organization Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: j.j.wolbers@vu.nl **Department of Organization Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: f.k.boersma@vu.nl The common operational picture is used to overcome coordination and information management problems during emergency response. Increasingly, this approach is incor- porated in more advanced information systems.This is rooted in an ‘information ware- house’ perspective, which implies information can be collected, sorted and exchanged in an accessible and univocal form. In practice, however, professionals interpret similar information differently.Therefore, we focus on how emergency responders develop col- lective sensemaking from information.We employ a ‘trading zone’ perspective, in which information is negotiated, to study information management in an ethnographic study of disaster exercises in the Netherlands. Our analysis shows how professionals attribute different meanings to information that distorts the coordination process. We end by stressing the importance of actionable knowledge and reflexivity. 1. The problem of information management during emergency response ‘Once asbestos is part of the incident a whole new procedure has to be started up. What I need is our hazardous materials expert on the spot as soon as possible. I know about some of the asbestos proce- dures, and what should happen, but I think it is very important for us to ask for expert knowledge. I had the feeling the fire officer made the decisions very quickly by himself. He has taken measurements because of the asbestos: he took care of the decon- tamination on the street. It was like:“I do this” and “I do that” . . . I had the feeling that the fire fighters were not collaborating with others. If I knew about that asbestos earlier I would have responded differ- ently but they didn’t tell us.“You didn’t know this was relevant for us? Excuse me!”’ 1 T his quote is from an officer who represents the municipal authorities. He made this remark as a reaction to a fire officer’s action during a training session. It indicates that emergency response organiza- tions rely upon each other’s information to align work processes. At the same time, the quote reveals that the representatives of the different professions often ‘forget’ to share information because they tend to operate within their own professional ‘silos’. It is well documented that emergency response organizations struggle with information sharing, com- munication and coordination (Bharosa, Lee, & Janssen, 2010; Comfort, 2007; Netten & Van Someren, 2011; Quarantelli, 1997). During emergency response opera- tions, organizations with different backgrounds, special- ized operational expertise and different professional languages need to coordinate their actions across juris- dictional and organizational boundaries (Comfort & Kapucu, 2006).This coordination problem is even more Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management Volume 21 Number 4 December 2013 © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd DOI: 10.1111/1468-5973.12027