Natural hazards like floods can create emergencies, in which professional responders face complex and uncertain situations in order to save lives and reduce suffering. Crisis Management Information Systems (CMIS) aim to support responders by reducing complexity and uncertainty, improving situation awareness and facilitating coordination. An example for such an CMIS is GDACSmobile, an Assessment Information System that integrates mobile devices and social media to collect and categorise relevant information about the affected area. Research has informed the design of EMIS, but only little research has been done on how to evaluate CMIS. A promising approach to evaluate CMIS is the use of serious games, in which participants act as emergency responders.

The objective of this Master's thesis is to develop an CMIS evaluation framework for serious games.  To achieve this objective, the state of the art of CMIS design, software evaluation and serious games has to be analysed and integrated into the framework. The framework shall describe, for instance, which constructs are suitable to measure an CMIS's effect on responders' situational awareness. Eventually, the evaluation framework's applicability shall be demonstrated by integrating it into an existing serious game, so that the game can be used to evaluate GDACSmobile as a prototypical CMIS.

Recommended reading:

• GDACSmobile User Guide: http://gdacsmobile.de.vu/
• Link et al. (2013): Content Moderation and Twitter Integration in GDACSmobile.
• Meesters, Kenny (2014): Towards using Serious Games for realistic evaluation of disaster management IT tools. In Imed Boughzala, Daniel Lang, Assar Said (Eds.): Actes de la 2ème Journée AIM de recherche Serious Games et innovation. Proceedings of the 2nd AIM Research and Innovation Day Serious Games. Paris, France, 18.09.2014 (CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 1288), pp. 38–48.
• Van de Walle and Turoff (2007): Emergency response information systems: Emerging trends and technologies.