A Survey of Time-Sensitive, Cross-Organizational Team Collaboration Research for Application to Aviation Crisis Management

Because of pressing needs in the US aviation security community to collaborate effectively and quickly across organizations and time-zones, we surveyed the literature pertaining to synchronous, non-collocated, cross-organizational, time-sensitive collaboration for crisis management (especially if the crises occur in the context of the aviation domain). We examined 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 our research context. We surveyed 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, we examined research in team awareness, sensemaking and decision-making. Types of group tasks affect technology use and adoption, so we considered the literature surrounding these topics, as well, before turning to case studies of new collaboration technologies and current aviation collaboration state-of-the-practice. We end with the findings most relevant to developing new aviation security collaboration approaches, including procedures, needed functionality, and candidate capabilities.