To aid research in crisis management, this book reviews the literature pertaining to synchronous, non-collocated, cross-organizational, time-sensitive collaboration. It examines the theoretical constructs that researchers have proposed for collaborative systems and determined that several of these, such as common ground and awareness theory, have particular applicability to crisis management. It also reviews collaboration models that were developed to provide frameworks for understanding the multiple facets of technological support to group work.

Because teams normally need to come to a common understanding of the situation and the relevant decisions, this book examines research in team awareness, sensemaking and decision-making. Types of group tasks affect technology use and adoption, so the authors consider the literature surrounding these topics before turning to case studies of new collaboration technologies.

Finally, it assesses the findings most relevant to developing new crisis management collaboration approaches, including procedures, needed functionality, and candidate capabilities.