・Title:  From potential to impact: Technology and Information

Management in Crisis Response with an example from the

Dutch National Corona Response

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・Speaker: Kenny Meesters,

Researcher, Tilburg University (NL), 

University (NL) & University of Agder (NO)

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・Abstract:

In the Netherlands the prime minister announced on March 17th 2020, that the Netherlands was facing a pandemic crisis. In the national address the prime minister Mark Rutte mentioned that in a crisis 100% of the decisions have to be made with 50% of the information. In the following days a new national structure was introduced to support the national coordination capacity: the National Operational Team Corona (LOT-C). The mandate of this organization was to support the various safety and emergency services in the Netherlands, coordination, additional assistance and ensure these services keep running as best they can, by looking at the immediate, mid- and long-term issues and developments.
  In this talk, Kenny Meesters, will share his experience from working in this national team. They will share the evolution of the crisis response in the Netherlands over time, the choices made and the challenges of establishing this new structure during a crisis. They will discuss the coordination and information challenges, and how this compares for example to international responses. In this webinar there we will discuss the operational reality of IM & coordination in both a technical, organizational and cultural sense. 

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・Paper:

In case you want to offer some reading: 

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-65355-2_22   

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・Keywords: Information Management, Coordination, Crisis Response, Resilience

・Short bio:

Kenny Meesters (@k_meesters) is a researcher in information management at Tilburg University (NL). He focuses on information  management in an operational setting in crisis response and disaster management. He has done various field studies in the aftermath of large disasters, and is also a member of various response mechanisms including the European Civil Protection Mechanism. In the early stages of the Corona pandemic Kenny was active in the  National Operational Team Corona (LOT-C) as information manager. This coordinating body was introduced to support the various Safety Regions and other critical partners in the Netherlands. In addition to his IMO role, he also brought along three students to support the research during the response. Read about their experience: https://edu.nl/epabn