L. Comfort | University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (original) (raw)
Papers by L. Comfort
Decision making in extreme events presents a difficult challenge to emergency managers who are le... more Decision making in extreme events presents a difficult challenge to emergency managers who are legally responsible for protecting life, property, and maintaining continuity of operations for their respective organizations or communities. Prior research has identified the benefits of gaining situation awareness in rapidly changing disaster contexts, but situation awareness is not always sufficient. We have investigated "option awareness" and the decision space to provide cognitive support for emergency managers to simulate computationally possible outcomes of different options before they make a decision. Employing a user-centered design process, we developed a computational model that rapidly generates ranges of likely outcomes for different options and displays them visually through a prototype decision-space interface that allows rapid comparison of the options. Feedback from emergency managers suggests that decision spaces may enable emergency managers to consider a wider range of options for decisions and may facilitate more targeted, effective decision making under uncertain conditions.
SPIE Proceedings, 2003
This proposal outlines an action plan for risk management in the Delaware Valley Metropolitan Reg... more This proposal outlines an action plan for risk management in the Delaware Valley Metropolitan Region. This plan is consistent with the goals for strengthening homeland security announced by President Bush, and is designed to complement efforts currently under development by Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and Department of Health. This plan proposes the formation of a Delaware Valley Risk Management Consortium, representing the critical disciplines and organizations related to risk assessment and management. This group would have membership from academic institutions, government agencies, industry, and nonprofit organizations. This Consortium would develop a systemic scope of work with the appropriate recommendations for technology acquisition, development and integration with risk management policies and procedures. This scope of work would include the development of two related information systems for the Delaware Valley Region. The first would be a comprehensive 'health monitoring' system to assess the continuity of operations, which would use integrated remote sensing and imaging, information gathering, communication, computation, and, information processing and management over wide-area networks covering the entire metropolitan area. The second would use real-time information from the health monitoring system to support interactive communication, search and information exchange needed to coordinate action among the relevant agencies to mitigate risk, respond to hazards and manage its resources efficiently and effectively.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010
One way to assess whether governments (at any level) learn from their disaster experience is to e... more One way to assess whether governments (at any level) learn from their disaster experience is to examine two similar events at different points in time. We investigate and compare the 1989 EXXON VALDEZ oil spill disaster with the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil platform and oil spill disaster to ascertain how governmental law and policy, implemented in an intergovernmental realm, has changed or advanced. One goal is to outline what coastal local government officials need to know to ensure sustainability of their jurisdictions in the face of hazard and disaster risk. The study recounts both incidents and recommends intergovernmental analysis informed by the theories of nested sets, distributed cognition, and sociotechnical systems.
Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 2014
The 12 January 2010 earthquake in Haiti demonstrates the necessity of understanding information c... more The 12 January 2010 earthquake in Haiti demonstrates the necessity of understanding information communication between disciplines during disasters. Armed with data from a variety of sources, from geophysics to construction, water and sanitation to education, decision makers can initiate well-informed policies to reduce the risk from future hazards. At the core of this disaster was a natural hazard that occurred
Page 280. CHAPTER 16 NETWORK THEORY AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION Designing Resilience fo... more Page 280. CHAPTER 16 NETWORK THEORY AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION Designing Resilience for Metropolitan Regions Louise K. Comfort, Clayton Wukich, Steve Scheinert, and Leonard J. Huggins Metropolitan ...
ABSTRACT RISK AND RESILIENCE The recurring failure of communities to assess, monitor and respond ... more ABSTRACT RISK AND RESILIENCE The recurring failure of communities to assess, monitor and respond effectively to threats from dynamic environments represents a continuing problem in human and social dynamics. Recent examples of devastation to the city of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flood in 2005, and the nearly complete destruction of the city of Banda Aceh, Indonesia following the 2004 Sumatran Earthquake and Tsunami, illustrate the discrepancy between current forms of organizational planning and the actual capacity of individuals and organizations to act collectively in the face of extreme danger. In both instances, scientific information about the potential threat was well documented among scientists, but the representation of the threat and the timely transmission of that information to the wider community failed to initiate appropriate action as the communities confronted the actual events. While response to the 2004 and 2005 events listed above appears to validate the argument by Mancur Olsen (1965) that organizing collective action for large groups is very difficult, even with the shared goal of reducing extreme danger, we explore a different set of cognitive processes that link information to action. Instead of searching for a 'logic of collective action' (Olsen, 1965), we explore the emergence of a "common operating picture," a term used by emergency managers (EMs) to describe the collective recognition of danger that enables the simultaneous activation of different types of action at different levels of responsibility by distinct actors and organizations. This collective recognition of risk is even more difficult when an entire community is exposed to risk, as there is significant heterogeneity among the individuals, households, groups and organizations, all of whom share the risk, but each has different degrees of knowledge, experience, resources, training, and capacity for action. Many of these diverse actors do not interact with others in the community on a regular basis. Yet, the degree to which an entire community can take informed, timely action in response to urgent threats depends upon its capacity for collective recognition of risk. Developing collective cognition would constitute a primary means for reducing risk and loss from disaster, and serve as a major component of building that community's resilience to recurring risk. We explore the relation between cognition and action for communities exposed to recurring risk, and the possibilities for designing collective cognition that leads to community-wide action to reduce risk. COLLECTIVE COGNITION IN RISK ENVIRONMENTS The process of perceiving risk, recognizing danger, and translating that knowledge into action has been studied by psychologists (Weick, 1995; Weick and Roberts, 1993; Klein et al., 1993; Flin, 1995), but those findings have most often focused on individual actors or leaders. Klein and his colleagues have developed a model of "recognition-primed decisionmaking" (RPD) which captures the process of perceiving risk, identifying plausible actions in a constrained environment, and formulating a workable strategy of action. This model has been recognized by emergency response personnel and military officers as an insightful representation of the decision making process they follow in urgent environments (Killion, 2000). The focus of the RPD model, however, remains on the individual decision maker, not on collective cognition.
Preface. Acknowledgements. List of tables. List of figures. Part I: Shared Risk in Theory: Contex... more Preface. Acknowledgements. List of tables. List of figures. Part I: Shared Risk in Theory: Context, Concept and Methods of Analysis. Shared risk and self-organizing processes. Models of transition in complex, dynamic environments. Measuring change in nonlinear social systems. The 'Edge of Chaos': creative response in dynamic environments. Part II: Shared Risk in Practice: The Evolution of Response Systems. Nonadaptive systems: San Salvador, Ecuador and Armenia. Emergent adaptive systems: Mexico City, Costa Rica, and Erzincan, Turkey. Operative adaptive systems: Whittier Narrows, California Loma Prieta, California and Maharashtra, India. Auto-adaptive systems: self organization or dysfunction in Northridge, California and Hanshin, Japan. Part III: Future Strategies: Managing Risk in Complex, Adaptive Systems. Adaptation to disaster: evolving response systems. Sociotechnical systems and the reduction of global risk. Bibliography. Appendices. Index.
Administration & Society, 2012
Local governments face a tightening economic bind while struggling to balance obligations to prot... more Local governments face a tightening economic bind while struggling to balance obligations to protect their communities. As populations change and hazards expand, they confront a mounting number of threats while trying to maintain basic services. This article examines demands and constraints that are placed on government agencies in providing public safety and public health services. The authors recommend building interagency cooperation to maximize the utility of existing staff and resources. These distributed systems increase the flexibility and resilience of the community as well as the cooperating organizations. It is a paradigm shift from organization-centric thinking toward a coordinated effort to build resilience for the whole community.
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, 1989
In general, preparations for disasters which result in mass casualties do not incorporate a moder... more In general, preparations for disasters which result in mass casualties do not incorporate a modern resuscitation approach. We explored the life-saving potential of, and time limits for life-supporting first aid (LSFA), advanced trauma life support (ATLS), resuscitative surgery, and prolonged life support (PLS: intensive care) following the earthquake in Armenia on 7 December 1988. We used a structured, retrospective interview method applied previously to evaluation of emergency medical services (EMS) in the United States. A total of 120 survivors of, and participants in the earthquake in Armenia were interviewed on site (49 lay eyewitnesses, 20 search-rescue personnel, 39 medical personnel and records, and 12 administrators). Answers were verified by crosschecks. Preliminary results permit the following generalizations: 1) a significant number of victims died slowly as the result of injuries such as external hemorrhage, head injury with coma, shock, or crush syndrome; 2) early searc...
Voenno-medit͡sinskiĭ zhurnal, 1990
Voenno-medit͡sinskiĭ zhurnal, 1990
![Research paper thumbnail of [Retrospective research in disaster medicine]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/90507084/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Voenno-medit͡sinskiĭ zhurnal, 1990
Proceedings of the 2006 national conference on Digital government research - dg.o '06, 2006
Decision making in extreme events presents a difficult challenge to emergency managers who are le... more Decision making in extreme events presents a difficult challenge to emergency managers who are legally responsible for protecting life, property, and maintaining continuity of operations for their respective organizations or communities. Prior research has identified the benefits of gaining situation awareness in rapidly changing disaster contexts, but situation awareness is not always sufficient. We have investigated "option awareness" and the decision space to provide cognitive support for emergency managers to simulate computationally possible outcomes of different options before they make a decision. Employing a user-centered design process, we developed a computational model that rapidly generates ranges of likely outcomes for different options and displays them visually through a prototype decision-space interface that allows rapid comparison of the options. Feedback from emergency managers suggests that decision spaces may enable emergency managers to consider a wider range of options for decisions and may facilitate more targeted, effective decision making under uncertain conditions.
SPIE Proceedings, 2003
This proposal outlines an action plan for risk management in the Delaware Valley Metropolitan Reg... more This proposal outlines an action plan for risk management in the Delaware Valley Metropolitan Region. This plan is consistent with the goals for strengthening homeland security announced by President Bush, and is designed to complement efforts currently under development by Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and Department of Health. This plan proposes the formation of a Delaware Valley Risk Management Consortium, representing the critical disciplines and organizations related to risk assessment and management. This group would have membership from academic institutions, government agencies, industry, and nonprofit organizations. This Consortium would develop a systemic scope of work with the appropriate recommendations for technology acquisition, development and integration with risk management policies and procedures. This scope of work would include the development of two related information systems for the Delaware Valley Region. The first would be a comprehensive 'health monitoring' system to assess the continuity of operations, which would use integrated remote sensing and imaging, information gathering, communication, computation, and, information processing and management over wide-area networks covering the entire metropolitan area. The second would use real-time information from the health monitoring system to support interactive communication, search and information exchange needed to coordinate action among the relevant agencies to mitigate risk, respond to hazards and manage its resources efficiently and effectively.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010
One way to assess whether governments (at any level) learn from their disaster experience is to e... more One way to assess whether governments (at any level) learn from their disaster experience is to examine two similar events at different points in time. We investigate and compare the 1989 EXXON VALDEZ oil spill disaster with the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil platform and oil spill disaster to ascertain how governmental law and policy, implemented in an intergovernmental realm, has changed or advanced. One goal is to outline what coastal local government officials need to know to ensure sustainability of their jurisdictions in the face of hazard and disaster risk. The study recounts both incidents and recommends intergovernmental analysis informed by the theories of nested sets, distributed cognition, and sociotechnical systems.
Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 2014
The 12 January 2010 earthquake in Haiti demonstrates the necessity of understanding information c... more The 12 January 2010 earthquake in Haiti demonstrates the necessity of understanding information communication between disciplines during disasters. Armed with data from a variety of sources, from geophysics to construction, water and sanitation to education, decision makers can initiate well-informed policies to reduce the risk from future hazards. At the core of this disaster was a natural hazard that occurred
Page 280. CHAPTER 16 NETWORK THEORY AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION Designing Resilience fo... more Page 280. CHAPTER 16 NETWORK THEORY AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION Designing Resilience for Metropolitan Regions Louise K. Comfort, Clayton Wukich, Steve Scheinert, and Leonard J. Huggins Metropolitan ...
ABSTRACT RISK AND RESILIENCE The recurring failure of communities to assess, monitor and respond ... more ABSTRACT RISK AND RESILIENCE The recurring failure of communities to assess, monitor and respond effectively to threats from dynamic environments represents a continuing problem in human and social dynamics. Recent examples of devastation to the city of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flood in 2005, and the nearly complete destruction of the city of Banda Aceh, Indonesia following the 2004 Sumatran Earthquake and Tsunami, illustrate the discrepancy between current forms of organizational planning and the actual capacity of individuals and organizations to act collectively in the face of extreme danger. In both instances, scientific information about the potential threat was well documented among scientists, but the representation of the threat and the timely transmission of that information to the wider community failed to initiate appropriate action as the communities confronted the actual events. While response to the 2004 and 2005 events listed above appears to validate the argument by Mancur Olsen (1965) that organizing collective action for large groups is very difficult, even with the shared goal of reducing extreme danger, we explore a different set of cognitive processes that link information to action. Instead of searching for a 'logic of collective action' (Olsen, 1965), we explore the emergence of a "common operating picture," a term used by emergency managers (EMs) to describe the collective recognition of danger that enables the simultaneous activation of different types of action at different levels of responsibility by distinct actors and organizations. This collective recognition of risk is even more difficult when an entire community is exposed to risk, as there is significant heterogeneity among the individuals, households, groups and organizations, all of whom share the risk, but each has different degrees of knowledge, experience, resources, training, and capacity for action. Many of these diverse actors do not interact with others in the community on a regular basis. Yet, the degree to which an entire community can take informed, timely action in response to urgent threats depends upon its capacity for collective recognition of risk. Developing collective cognition would constitute a primary means for reducing risk and loss from disaster, and serve as a major component of building that community's resilience to recurring risk. We explore the relation between cognition and action for communities exposed to recurring risk, and the possibilities for designing collective cognition that leads to community-wide action to reduce risk. COLLECTIVE COGNITION IN RISK ENVIRONMENTS The process of perceiving risk, recognizing danger, and translating that knowledge into action has been studied by psychologists (Weick, 1995; Weick and Roberts, 1993; Klein et al., 1993; Flin, 1995), but those findings have most often focused on individual actors or leaders. Klein and his colleagues have developed a model of "recognition-primed decisionmaking" (RPD) which captures the process of perceiving risk, identifying plausible actions in a constrained environment, and formulating a workable strategy of action. This model has been recognized by emergency response personnel and military officers as an insightful representation of the decision making process they follow in urgent environments (Killion, 2000). The focus of the RPD model, however, remains on the individual decision maker, not on collective cognition.
Preface. Acknowledgements. List of tables. List of figures. Part I: Shared Risk in Theory: Contex... more Preface. Acknowledgements. List of tables. List of figures. Part I: Shared Risk in Theory: Context, Concept and Methods of Analysis. Shared risk and self-organizing processes. Models of transition in complex, dynamic environments. Measuring change in nonlinear social systems. The 'Edge of Chaos': creative response in dynamic environments. Part II: Shared Risk in Practice: The Evolution of Response Systems. Nonadaptive systems: San Salvador, Ecuador and Armenia. Emergent adaptive systems: Mexico City, Costa Rica, and Erzincan, Turkey. Operative adaptive systems: Whittier Narrows, California Loma Prieta, California and Maharashtra, India. Auto-adaptive systems: self organization or dysfunction in Northridge, California and Hanshin, Japan. Part III: Future Strategies: Managing Risk in Complex, Adaptive Systems. Adaptation to disaster: evolving response systems. Sociotechnical systems and the reduction of global risk. Bibliography. Appendices. Index.
Administration & Society, 2012
Local governments face a tightening economic bind while struggling to balance obligations to prot... more Local governments face a tightening economic bind while struggling to balance obligations to protect their communities. As populations change and hazards expand, they confront a mounting number of threats while trying to maintain basic services. This article examines demands and constraints that are placed on government agencies in providing public safety and public health services. The authors recommend building interagency cooperation to maximize the utility of existing staff and resources. These distributed systems increase the flexibility and resilience of the community as well as the cooperating organizations. It is a paradigm shift from organization-centric thinking toward a coordinated effort to build resilience for the whole community.
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, 1989
In general, preparations for disasters which result in mass casualties do not incorporate a moder... more In general, preparations for disasters which result in mass casualties do not incorporate a modern resuscitation approach. We explored the life-saving potential of, and time limits for life-supporting first aid (LSFA), advanced trauma life support (ATLS), resuscitative surgery, and prolonged life support (PLS: intensive care) following the earthquake in Armenia on 7 December 1988. We used a structured, retrospective interview method applied previously to evaluation of emergency medical services (EMS) in the United States. A total of 120 survivors of, and participants in the earthquake in Armenia were interviewed on site (49 lay eyewitnesses, 20 search-rescue personnel, 39 medical personnel and records, and 12 administrators). Answers were verified by crosschecks. Preliminary results permit the following generalizations: 1) a significant number of victims died slowly as the result of injuries such as external hemorrhage, head injury with coma, shock, or crush syndrome; 2) early searc...
Voenno-medit͡sinskiĭ zhurnal, 1990
Voenno-medit͡sinskiĭ zhurnal, 1990
Voenno-medit͡sinskiĭ zhurnal, 1990
Proceedings of the 2006 national conference on Digital government research - dg.o '06, 2006