Current Projects

Current Projects:

Public Interest Technology in emergency management: With DC area emergency managers, we are co-designing a socio-technical system that facilitates emergency managerial competence and autonomy. Our research takes an integrative approach to the use of technology in emergency and crisis managerial work in cognitive, organizational, and societal domains. We are examining the cognitive correlates of crisis-management-type decision-making among a sample of emergency management professionals in high-risk scenarios as well as scenarios related to the use of artificial intelligence. The study will help us better understand how cognitive, dispositional and motivational aspects might be linked to decision outcomes in the context of AI.

AI and the Future of Public Sector Work: This project is using knowledge co-production and participatory co-design approaches to understand how public managers perceive the implications of AI on their work, what tasks in their routine workflow they consider to be appropriate or inappropriate for AI integration and why.

Thinking Dispositions and AI Adoption: This project is examining the cognitive, attitudinal, and motivational factors predict AI adoption in public sector contexts. AI Literacy is one predictor of AI adoption. However, little is known about what thinking dispositions predict AI literacy.

Perceived Information Overload and the Changing Digital Landscape: As digital information and communication continue to proliferate with technological advances, we ask whether perceptions of information overload are also rising and what the causes and implications could be.

Past Projects: 

AI Ethics discourse in the public sector: This project developed a picture of artificial intelligence use and discourse in the public sector to guide theory development and identify areas for technical assistance. We analyzed use cases of artificial intelligence (AI) globally and across levels of government and a variety of public sectors (from policing and transportation to social services and public health) to examine the discourse around AI ethics in the public sector. Our analysis was informed by Epistemic Frame Theory, and Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) was used as the analytical approach. We sought to answer questions such as: What AI ethics concerns were most often discussed in use cases across sectors, countries, applications, and levels of government? Which AI ethics concerns were neglected? What were the key differences in AI ethics discourse across sectors, countries, applications, and levels of government? What were the linkages among AI ethics concepts, and where were linkages missing?

Past Project Events:

August 12, 2024: AI in Hazard Mitigation and Emergency Preparedness Workshop: The PI-Tech Lab event on AI in Hazard Mitigation and Emergency Preparedness drew 30 emergency managers to the EBC at the VTRC in Arlington for a day long workshop on how to better use AI for emergency and crisis management, specifically hazard mitigation planning. The group worked through a participatory co-design process to develop a framework for new AI tools and operational and ethical guardrails and guidelines for using those tools. The group also offered feedback on a pilot custom GPT created by Virginia Tech called Hazard Helper, intended to provide feedback on hazard mitigation plans. The workshop was funded by the Destination Areas 2.0 initiative (Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost) on Public Interest Technology to design ethical AI tools and deploy them responsibly. Click here to access the workshop summary