McGuirl et al. Real-time feedback for crisis management decision-making Seeing is believing?: The effects of real-time, image- based feedback on emergency management decision- making John M. McGuirl Institute for Ergonomics The Ohio State University mcguirl.1@osu.edu Nadine B. Sarter Center for Ergonomics University of Michigan sarter@umich.edu David D. Woods Institute for Ergonomics The Ohio State University woods.2@osu.edu ABSTRACT Emergency management personnel often face feedback delays and a lack of reliable information. To address this problem, new information technologies have been developed that can provide real-time, image-based feedback. While potentially useful, this trend represents a fundamental shift in both the timing and format of the information used by incident commanders (ICs). Eight ICs took part in a simulation exercise to determine the potential impact of real-time imaging on their decision-making. Nearly all of the ICs failed to detect important changes in the situation that were not captured in the imaging but that were available via other, more traditional data sources. It appears that the ICs placed an inappropriately high level of trust in the imaging data, resulting in reduced data search activities and hypothesis generation. This research helps practitioners anticipate and guard against undesirable effects of introducing similar technologies on training and operational procedures. Keywords Decision-making, situation assessment, attention narrowing, trust miscalibration, emergency management INTRODUCTION The ability to gather relevant data in a timely fashion is paramount to properly assessing and responding to a crisis event. Unfortunately, emergency responders are often faced with both a scarcity and an uncertainty of information, as well as delays in feedback, particularly during the initial stages of an incident. Efforts to address these challenges often revolve around technologies that increase the amount and timeliness of data that is available to the decision- maker. However, previous research has shown that altering the amount, form, and timing of data that practitioners use can have unwanted side effects and introduce new vulnerabilities to the system they are meant to improve. Some of these vulnerabilities include increased data management demands, the generation of new forms of errors, reduced adaptability, and a narrowing of data search activities and hypothesis generation (Billings, 1997; Norman, 1990; Sarter and Woods, 1992, 1995; Smith et al., 1997). The introduction of real-time image-based feedback into emergency management produces a point of change that offers a unique opportunity for analyzing how the cognitive work in that domain is conducted (Cook and Woods, 1996; Patterson et al, 2002). Our objective is to contribute to a better understanding of changes in the cognitive processes involved in this domain and to help avoid the potential breakdowns this new information source may create. Proceedings of the 5 th International ISCRAM Conference – Washington, DC, USA, May 2008 F. Fiedrich and B. Van de Walle, eds. 406