Natural Interfaces for Asset Management
in Disaster Recovery Scenarios
“T-Cards for Vanguards”
Greg Ash
gash07@tamu.edu
Roger Casco
casc25@tamu.edu
Aaron Herstein
aarongh2012@gmail.com
Brett Overesch
oversearch@gmail.com
Kevin Winget
kvnjw@tamu.edu
Introduction
As the vanguards of our society, firefighters and other emergency first-response teams are currently
using a T-card tracking system for crucial resources: an old pen-and-paper system that is long overdue
for a high tech upgrade. When lives are on the line and every second counts, nothing could be more
important than being able to locate and deploy these resources as soon as possible. Some examples of
considerable progress in the area of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) are Lift-and-drop:
Crossing boundaries in a multi-display environment by Airlift (T. Bader, 2010), TeamTag: Exploring
centralized versus replicated controls for co-located tabletop groupware (M. R. Morris, 2006), and
Natural throw and tilt interaction between mobile phones and distant displays (R. Dachselt, 2009).
However, this technology has not yet been applied to the field of first-response and does not seem to
address the need for remote viewing of the public display on mobile devices.
Conceptual Basis
The primary objective of this project is to develop a trans-surface information visualization application
that will enable users to construct information resources on mobile devices, and share them publicly.
We hypothesize that our research project could create a new method of resource management using a
mobile computer-driven, multimodal interface which is much simpler and less time-consuming than
traditional handwritten methods. This is achievable by replacing the current system of placing T-cards in
slots on a board with digital T-cards being sent wirelessly to a large video display. Furthermore, our
project would allow resource information to be accessed from anywhere as soon as the mobile device is
synched with the central display, something not possible with the current T-card system.
Team
Brett Overesch has close to five years of experience as a professional programmer working on large
marketing applications consisting of web interfaces, complex database systems, and many supporting
applications. This experience has given him a great deal of confidence when designing and programming
large interconnected systems.
Kevin Winget has worked on several small-scale group projects which covered topics such as webapplications and database systems. He has good debugging and testing skills, along with an interest in
video editing.
Gregory Ash has experience developing graphical user interfaces that are intuitive to use. Furthermore,
Gregory has worked on long term (10 weeks) team projects with version control.
Roger Casco has experience with individual and group projects. He is proficient in programming in C,
C++, C#, Java, and Python programming languages and has an interest in mobile application software
development.
Aaron Herstein has significant experience with programming and with the development of relatively
large-scale applications as well as general knowledge of research related to interfaces, including the
ZeroTouch module.
Research Components
Before we can start designing our solution for this project, we must first determine how exactly are the
T-cards used and what information is written on them. We will determine this by asking an employee at
Disaster City who uses these cards to further explain about the T-cards. This will allow us to design an
electronic equivalent for the physical T-card.
The data will also need to be stored in an organized fashion so as to best assist in the timely retrieval of
relevant resources in the event of an emergency. This can be done by learning how the database will
eventually be used through interviews with end-users and then finding the optimal structure to meet
those needs. This database will enable users to apply search filters or criteria to quickly find the most
suitable resource for the task at hand.
The more technical component of our research will be finding efficient methods for transferring data
between devices and resolving which devices are participating in an information transfer. We will
accomplish this by utilizing hardware provided in the ecology lab to try different methods of wireless
communication, finding the one most suitable to our task. After our research is complete we will be
able to quickly transfer information from handheld devices to a large public display via trans-surface
touch interactions.
One of the most important components for the users of this project is the layout of the public display. In
order to design an interface that is both appealing and intuitive, research must be done into how the
current T-card board organization system works by interviewing users of the current system. The
resulting display should resemble the current T-card board so that the layout is familiar to current users
of the T-card board, but the new display should add rapid reorganizational features not possible with
the physical T-card board.
Research Benefits
Traditional means of managing disaster recovery assets involve rudimentary pen and paper tracking
mechanisms that are error prone, inefficient, and wasteful. Our research will offer new methods of
tracking assets that leverage recent innovations in multi-touch technology and the power of the
internet. We aim to produce a working model that is easy to use for personnel accustomed using
physical cards, but yet still provides all the benefits of a modern online solution. Since the data will be
stored in some central location it will be easy to view statistics on past disaster events, allowing users to
streamline the asset management process and better learn from mistakes. It will make local
governments and disaster recovery agencies much more efficient at tracking assets when every second
counts, potentially saving lives and taxpayer money. Additionally, because our solution is entirely
electronic, it will save trees by eliminating the need for disposable paper cards.
Supplemental Materials
References
M. R. Morris, A. P. (2006). TeamTag: Exploring centralized versus replicated controls for co-located
tabletop groupware. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems, 1273–1282.
R. Dachselt, R. B. (2009). Natural throw and tilt interaction between mobile phones and distant displays.
Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 3253–3258.
T. Bader, A. H. (2010). Lift-and-drop: Crossing boundaries in a multi-display environment by Airlift.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, 139–146.