Mobile Informatics: Watchman´s World

Abstract

In today’s society, the concern of safety and security increases as our opinion of what are important changes. In this perspective the public police force has an important role to play,and so has the commercial security business. The later is the second largest security force in Europe and is constantly growing; in the USA it’s already the largest. With regard to this our main objective has been to investigate how the patrolling guards work. We have looked into how their community handles knowledge and learning, and how they communicate. We have also examined how patrolling guards can be supported with mobile IT. Our studies have been performed with a combination of ethnographic field studies and interviews, which we have carried out in the Port of Gothenburg. Our results show that the environments, in which the guards are working, are unique with its own standards and roles. The major part of the learning procedure takes place in their community of practice. The formal knowledge within the community is in the need for structuring and systematisation. People in the community communicate mainly verbally or in writing. We have found far too many channels for communication within the community and the communication is in the need of coordination. Our development of a prototype for mobile IT support has focused on these issues. The application must be user friendly with visualisation of information and one-clickonly technique.