Visual reporting in time-critical work: Exploring video use in emergency response

Paper in proceeding, 2011

This paper reports on an explorative project aimed to study the use of live video technology in emergency response work. The initial stage of the project aimed at enabling an emergency response organization with live video capabilities. The study covered the steps of design, development and deployment of an application for live video broadcasting. Over a 10 months period, professional responders has used the application in over 200 incidents. The study shows how short video sequences are produced as an embedded activity in order to capture small fragments of work rather than creating a complete coverage of an incident. Further, this study also shows how broadcasted video is incorporated into the work at the command center as visual reports, which open up for collective negotiations of the broader meaning of a situation.