The
ACIA Archive
ACIA develops
and maintains an archive of records and documents related to particular
critical incidents and related to theory and scholarship of such
incidents. The archive will be primarily digital – datasets
and scanned documents. However, the process of acquisition, indexing
and scanning will be ongoing. The Project Administrator, along
with part-time student and graduate student assistants, will maintain
the archive.
The
archive also serves the Christian Regenhard Center for Emergency
Response Studies, which is a federally-funded initiative which
will focus on emergency responses to large scale disasters, both
natural and man-made. Emphasis is placed on collecting and analyzing
first-person accounts from the emergency responders themselves.
The
Regenhard Center supports a related program of record acquisition,
indexing and scanning project with separate funding. The ACIA
and Regenhard archives are fully integrated so that each project
enhances the scope of the other.
The archive
has developed an Analytical Model
and Database Design for Critical Incident Analysis. The design
provides a structure for storing information and indexing incident
records. The stuctire of the database is
- multi-user
so several researchers can use the database at once;
- internet-based
so it can be used from many locations;
- relational
so that different types of records can be maintained.
The archive
database will include information on over 100,000 incidents, including
the following:
- A unique
identifier for the incident involved;
- the Critical
Incident Definition Attributes of the incident;
- The date
and time of the document;
- The location
associated with the document;
- Classifications
of the persons referenced in the document;
- Names
of the persons referenced in the document;
- Type of
document; and
- Time relationship
to the incident (before, during, after…).
A preliminary
concept plan is to identify classes of attributes. The first are
specific to a type of document or record:
- Personal
statements or interview tapes or transcripts;
- Official
incident management records;
- News articles
and videos; and
- Reports
and studies.
