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Projects by CIEM

"Beyond the Classroom: Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Haptics for Enhanced Surgical Training and Education" (ImmersiveSurgicalEdu)

Our goal is to combine the capabilities of virtual and augmented reality (VR, AR) technologies with low-cost wearable haptic devices to create a hapto-audio-visual hands-on laboratory environment.

  • Project owner/Manager: Universitet i Agder
  • Funding: Erasmus+
  • Contact person: Filippo Sanfilippo
  • Project period: TBA

"What's Missing?"

During crises, leaders rely on researchers to gather intel that will help them decide how to respond. Sometimes research produces satellite images, data bases or on-the-ground interviews. But rarely is enough information available to get a full picture of what's happening to a population impacted by war, famine, genocide or natural disasters."What's missing? Innovating Interdisciplinary Methods for Hard-to-Reach Environments," is funded through the Minerva Research Initiative, which supports a network of faculty investigators to strengthen the DoD's connections within the social science community.

DigCBA

DigCBA contributes to the responsible use of digital CBA in the refugee crisis. Digital technology, including mobile money, electronic vouchers, electronic cash, and recently blockchain-based systems, is transforming CBA. The technology has the potential to increase access to financial resources and services during times of crisis while increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of assistance.

CONTRA
Covid19 Network Technology based Responsive Action

CONTRA aims to develop a decision support system for pandemic responders to design an effective, efficient, sustainable, and fair COVID-19 vaccine supply chain inside countries while considering uncertainties like the number of vaccines needed. 

Systemic Pandemic Risk Management

SPRM further develops methods for systemic analysis and management of interdependent risk methods that were first used in the H2020 project Smart Mature Resilience (2015-2018). The methods are used to evaluate the Covid response in Agder with the participation of a broad-based focus group from Kristiansand municipality, SSHF Hospital and other relevant stakeholders. The evaluation is expected to provide insights for more effective prevention and management of new Covid waves and future pandemics.

  • Project owner/Manager: Stepchange AS
  • Funding: Norwegian Research Council, COVID-19 BIA call
  • Contact person: Jose Gonzalez
  • Partners: SSHF Hospital, Kristiansand municipality, Research Center in Emergency and Disaster Medicine (CRIMEDIM), Center for Disaster Medicine and Traumatology (KMC). 
  • Project period: 2020-2022

Airbonnet
Ubiquitous Connectivity via Autonomous Airborne Networks

This project will develop the technology for base stations on drones that can position themselves so that they can offer network connection in places where such does not exist or is not sufficiently developed. Facilitating better internet access in such areas will, in addition to a purely economic impact, also have a positive effect on the Internet of Things, smart agriculture and forestry, prevention of forest fires, search and rescue operations, first aid and crisis management.

The UAVs in the proposed technical solution are equipped with a communication module that connects to the user on the one hand and to mobile land-based infrastructure on the other hand. User data can also be sent through multiple UAVs before it reaching its destination. For this technology to be feasible, UAVs must be able to navigate without human guidance to locations with favorable transmitting / receiving conditions. The main approach in this project is to construct "radio maps" that describe the conditions in a specific region. By using these maps, the UAVs can make use of artificial intelligence which by its algorithms determines a suitable location for each UAV.

  • Project owner/Manager: UIA, CIEM
  • Funding: Norwegian Research Council, ICT+
  • Contact person: Daniel Romero
  • Partners: University of Vigo, Delft University of Technology, Gradiant. 
  • Project period: 2021-2024
  • Website 

INSITU
Sharing incident and threat information for common situational understanding

Emergency responders lack support to effectively share information and establish a common operational picture (COP), for reaching shared situational understanding of threats and incidents. This challenge is multifaceted: 1) lack of a systematic overview of information elements that are critical to share in different crisis scenarios; 2) no common map interface in place using standard symbols; and 3) different terminologies used across disciplines, resulting in possible communication problems in multi-agency collaboration. The INSITU project will address these challenges by developing systematic support for enhanced situational understanding. The solution will provide a common map interface, integrating harmonisation of terminology and collaboration support for information sharing and synthesis. The enhanced COP will also support evaluation and learning from exercises and incidents.

  • Project owner/Manager: UIA, CIEM
  • Funding: Norwegian Research Council, SAMRISK
  • Contact person: Bjørn Erik Munkvold
  • Partners: NTNU, Tingtun AS, Statsforvalteren i Agder, Linköping universitet, University of Sydney, F24 Nordics. 
  • Project period: 2019-2022
  • Project website

Virtual reality in Higher Education

A goal of the project was to work together to identify potential VR application scenarios and current VR practices in higher education. A further goal is to elaborate recommendations for higher education, in particular what kind of VR practices are suitable for the development of what kind of high-quality skills and competences. Finally, all three universities implemented VR practices in higher education courses of various disciplines following the established recommendations.

  • Project owner/Manager: University of Duisburg-Essen
  • Funding: Erasmus+ 
  • Contact person: Tim Majchrzak
  • Partners: University of Liechtenstein, University of Duisburg-Essen. Assosierte partnere: European Center for Information Systems (ERCIS) and the University of Nebraska Omaha (USA). 
  • Project period: 2019-2022
  • Project website

RISE_SMA
Social Media Analytics for Society and Crisis Communication 

RISE_SMA forms an interdisciplinary, international network combining excellent scholars and practitioners to enable vigorous knowledge sharing and to develop solutions for contemporary challenges for Social Media Analytics (SMA). Advanced theoretical approaches and methods of analysing social media data are especially relevant for two domains addressed in RISE_SMA: society and crisis communication. Social media communication has gained immense impact on society and decision-making at all levels. It offers potential for new forms of public discourses, but also challenges societal cohesion phenomena like fake news and vicious social bots. During uncertain events such as natural disasters or human-made crises, social media communication plays an increasingly important role for citizens and emergency service agencies. RISE_SMA attempts to uncover communication patterns and suggest best practices to seek and share information in precarious situations.

  • Project owner/Manager: University of Duisburg-Essen
  • Funding: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange
  • Contact person: Tim Majchrzak
  • Partners: Universität Duisburg-Essen (Tyskland), Universität Leiden (Nederland), Kristiansand kommune,  Virtimo AG (Tyskland), Queensland University Of Technology (Australia), Universitas Pajajaran (Indonesia), The University of Sydney (Australia), Universidade Do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Brasil).
  • Project period: 2019-2023
  • Project website
  • Project in Research gate

Ongoing PhD Projects at CIEM

  • Mari Aarland
    Resilience in supply chain management for critical infrastructure
  • Sindisiwe Magutshwa
    Towards a sociotechnical resilience for digital infrastructure in times of crises
  • Lucia Castro Herrera
    Exploring the Emergence of Situational Awareness through Social Media Listening Practices in Crisis Management

Completed PhD projects

  • Ahmed Abouzeid, 2023
    Artificial Intelligence for Uncovering Deception in Social Media During Political Crisis
  • Kristine Steen-Tveit, 2022
    Enhancing common situational understanding in natural disaster management
  • Mohammad Tafiqur Rahman, 2021
    Beslutningsstøtte ved distribusjon av humanitær nødhjelp
  • Mehdi Ben Lazreg, 2020
    Kriseledelse- Bruk av sosiale medier i krisesituasjoner
  • Hossein Baharmand, 2018
    Mer fleksibel nødhjelpskommunikasjon ved naturkatastrofer
  • Vimala Nunavath, 2017
    Behandling av informasjonsdata i nødsituasjoner

Completed projects

AUREAS
Augmented Reality Support for Decision-Making in Crisis Management
Bilateral mobiliy project with University of Duisburg-Essen 

  • Project owner/Manager: UIA, CIEM
  • Funding: Norwegian Research Council, IS-DAAD
  • Contact person: Tim Majchrzak
  • Partners: Universität Duisburg-Essen 
  • Project period: 2019-2020
  • Project site in Research Gate 

Norway-Russia Disaster Diplomacy in the High North and Arctic
This project investigated Norway-Russia relations on, for, and around Svalbard regarding how dealing with disasters may be used more in the Arctic and the High North to foster links between Norway and Russia. The focus was on disaster diplomacy which examines how dealing with disasters does and does not impact wider cooperation. For Svalbard, Norway-Russia interactions regarding disasters were examined after 1991 in the post-USSR period.

The results show that Norway-Russia relations have been, and currently are, influenced minimally by disaster diplomacy related to Svalbard. Many prospects for disaster-related cooperation exist in case local government officials, first-responders, scientists, or local people wish to actively pursue them. Yet this represents only the formal levels of disaster governance and of diplomacy. At informal levels around Svalbard, particularly people-to-people contacts between Norwegians and Russians, people's perceptions indicate potential disaster diplomacy.

Informal contacts appear to be producing disaster-related cooperation through trust, proximity, and interest in local activities. The differences and overlaps between formal and informal actions for disaster diplomacy represent an important outcome from Svalbard for Norway-Russia Arctic-related interactions.

  • Project owner/Manager: UIA, CIEM
  • Funding: Norwegian Research Council, NORRUS
  • Contact person: Ilan Kelman
  • Partners: University College London, UiT Det Arktiske universitet, Sampo Energi & Environment Research Ltd, Sigra Group, IMEMO. 
  • Project period: 2018-2020

ITRACK 
Integrated system for real-time tracking and collective intelligence humanitarian mission 

iTrack is designed as a cost-effective open source system, which will support organizations where resources may be limited. To further facilitate its uptake by humanitarian organisations operating conflict and disaster missions, we design technology and policies in with humanitarian practitioners with pilot applications with the World Food Programme and iMMAP in on-going conflict disasters in the Middle East.

  • Project owner/Manager: UIA, CIEM
  • Funding: H2020
  • Contact person: Tina Comes
  • Partners: Hanken Business School, TU Delft, NORCE, World Foopd Programme, iMMAP, Intrasoft, Trilateral Research, K-Now, Tree Technology, Teleplan Globe, Arttic.
  • Project period: 2016-2019 
  • Project website

Smart Mature Resilience
Smart Mature Resilience (SMR) was a multi-disciplinary research project working for more resilient cities in Europe. Researchers and cities came together to enhance cities’ capacity to resist, absorb and recover from the hazardous effects of climate change. A Resilience Management Guideline and a set of practical tools was piloted in a core group of cities and shared with a wider group of cities, strengthening the nexus of Europe’s resilient cities. The project has been acclaimed for an exceptionally successful implementation.

  • Project owner/Manager: Tecnun Universidad de Navarra
  • Funding: Horizon 2020
  • Scientific coordinator: Jose Gonzalez, UIA
  • Partners: University of Strathclyde, Linköping University, ICLEI, Kristiansand municipality, Donstia San Sebastian, Glasgow city Council, Vejle municipality, Bristol City Council, City of Rome, Riga City Council, DIN - German Institut for Standardization. 
  • Project period: 2015-2018
  • Project website

KriseSIM
The KriseSIM project developed a realistic, innovative and interactive virtual training tool (VTT) for time- critical decision making in an operations centre.

  • Project owner/Manager: UIA, CIEM
  • Funding: Aust-Agder utviklings- og kompetansefond
  • Contact person: Jaziar Radianti
  • Project period: 2018-2019

COMRADES
Collective Platform for Community Resilience and Social Innovation during Crises

COMRADES created an open‐source, community resilience platform, designed by communities, for communities, to help them reconnect, respond to, and recover from crisis situations.

  • Project owner/Coordinator: The Open University
  • Funding: H2020
  • Contact person: Tina Comes
  • Partners: The Open University (UK), I-HUB LIMITED (Kenya), University of Sheffield (UK), Government to You (Belgium), University of Agder (Norway).
  • Project period: 2016-2018
  • Project website

Global Orchestrated Disaster Defense 

  • Project owner/Manager: UIA, CIEM
  • Funding: University of Agder
  • Contact person: Ole-Christoffer Granmo
  • Project period: 2015-2017

SmartRescue

The SmartRescue project has explored how smart phone technology can be used in acute crisis situations, where individuals need to be alerted about immediate threats, and be supported with plans for evacuating the affected area in the safest possible way. Our focus has particularly been on the first phase of an acute and severe emergency situation in which human life and health are endangered, and where individuals for the moment are partially left to themselves, for example, because the traditional response apparatus is suppressed, delayed or paralyzed by the crisis.

  • Project owner/Manager: UIA, CIEM
  • Funding: Aust-Agder utviklings- og kompetansefond
  • Contact person: Ole-Christoffer Granmo
  • Partners: ST-Ericsson, MCP – Maritime Communications Partner, Red Rock AS, County governor of Aust-Agder.  
  • Project period: 2015-2017

CIEMCOE
CIEM towards Centre of Excellent Research

A paradigm shift in Emergency Preparedness and Management is possible owing to persistent progress in mobile technologies and services, their world-wide diffusion and affordability, and the emergence of ever new ingenious uses by citizens. CIEM targets to facilitate the shift by significantly advancing the solution of five interlinked key problems, including technological, organisational and cultural challenges.

  • Project owner/Manager: UIA, CIEM
  • Funding: Aust-Agder utviklings- og kompetansefond
  • Contact person: Ole-Christoffer Granmo
  • Project period: 2013-2016

SmartEMIS
Smart Emergency Management Information Systems

The project focus on how mobile devices such as smart phones combined with different forms of social media can be applied for improving information sharing and collaboration in emergency preparedness and management.

  • Project owner/Manager: UIA, CIEM
  • Funding: Sørlandets kompetansefond
  • Contact person: Bjørn Erik Munkvold
  • Project period: 2012-2013

Bayesian networks for modeling of hydrological processes

Developing tools to express uncertainty in the forecasts of hydrological power. Investigating this type of hybrid model can be very transferable to other disciplines that are relevant for CIEM, such as emergency preparedness and crisis management in the event of a fire. The algorithms and methods to be investigated in this project will be of great relevance.

  • Project owner/Manager: Agder Energi
  • Funding: VRI Agder
  • Contact person: Ole-Christoffer Granmo. 
  • Project period: 2013-2014
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Published Apr. 2, 2024 - Last modified Apr. 12, 2024