Sense-making of an emergency call

Abstract

Work in control rooms, or so-called Centers of coordination, challenges both humans and technology. The people working there have to be able to make quick decisions as well as be alert during less busy times. The work has to be coordinated within the group, since the operators are much depending on each other's work. This places special demands on the technology; it should be fast, trustworthy and easy to manipulate so that the complexity of the work is reduced.SOS Alarm is a company that is responsible for managing the telephone calls made to the emergency telephone number 112 in Sweden. The SOS operators receive, categorize, document, dispatch and monitor the incoming cases. This paper discusses SOS operators work; how they coordinate the information and tasks between them; how the technology supports that work. This study presents a fully computerized setting, compared to many other studies of centers of coordination that are not.