Using Design Science to Improve Victim Health Outcomes in Response to Active Shooter Events

The number of Active Shooting Events (ASEs) per year have increased from 2000 to now (Blair et al. 2014) and with this increase there has also been an increase in the number of deaths of innocent victims. Post incident analysis reports suggest improvements in situational awareness could have reduced the number of deaths during the incidents studied. Response efforts in Active Shooter Events have the participation of several types of first responding agencies (Police, Fire, Emergency Medical Services, Medical Transportations Services, Emergency Management Services, etc.) and tend to be law enforcement centric. To manage ASEs it is critical that information on: perilous conditions, on-site location of responders and victims, casualty information, response maneuvers, and other event relevant information, is pooled in a common repository that enable informed and timely decision making regarding collaboration not only in event management but also victim management.;Cooperative efforts among responding agencies are often hindered by factors such as: the lack of a common information repository; absence of common terminology between agencies; mutual aid rules that determine the involvement of each agency; HIPAA boundaries on victim information that can be shared; and, gaps in communication from hand offs between agencies. These hindrances are even more evident in mass casualty events (Arbon 2004; Zhu et al. 2007), where decisions are made under time pressure (Arbon et al. 2001; Haghighi et al. 2013), making consistency and information availability critical in the decision making process.;It is critical to enhance the information available to decision makers to increase their situational awareness and upturn victim centric response efforts, through systems that can provide a common operating picture to all the participants, thus filling a void by providing coverage to all efforts related to event management, and to expand the shared understanding that each one of the agencies has.;The objective of this research is to investigate the impact of Information Systems design on response efforts during and after extreme events. A significant goal is to provide a mechanism to enable more efficient decision making during highly volatile and dynamic events.;This investigation is done at three levels: a) Victim Information Management and Decision Making: This essay explores how an ontology can enhance situational awareness and the decision making process in ASEs. This is achieved with the implementation of the ontology, in the form of a system that manages response efforts in ASEs, paying special attention to existing gaps. b) Resource Allocation in Concurrent Events: This essay explores resource allocation and optimization at local and global levels, when there are multiple extreme events occurring simultaneously in close geographical proximity (using the same large pool of resources). The focus is on developing systems that have enough flexibility to allow for resource borrowing and re-allocation without compromising the flows of information and responders situational awareness; c) Responder and victim continued care with the use of internet based therapy mechanisms: This essay focuses on the development of a web-based IT system for iCBT applications for the treatment of mild to moderate PTSD diagnoses. We place our research in the intervention area of iCBT, where the facilitation of interaction with therapists in a non-threatening environment, peer interaction, and access to self-help and educational resources, will likely lead to changes in the perception of the self and a reduction of PTSD symptoms in patients. This Design Science Research proposal leverages the PTSD model to derive a framework that caters to PTSD patients, and provides an artifact that acts like a platform to deliver CBT that can be generalized to other disorders.