Disaster Information, Resilience, for Emergency and Crisis Technologies
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Item Perception of Emerging Technology for Emergency Preparedness: A Cross-Sectional Study(2025-01-07) Bennett Gayle, Deedee; Goodarzi, Mahsa; Yuan, Xiaojun; Mwavita, Mwarumba; Laforce, SalimahThis study gauges the preparedness levels of individuals (younger and older) across hazards and investigates their willingness to use emerging technology for disaster preparedness. Older adults are among the most vulnerable during disasters and more likely to be displaced. As climate change contributes to the increased frequency, intensity, and scale of disasters, the number of areas impacted by multiple hazards has also increased. In December 2023, a nationwide survey with over 1,000 respondents was launched. The results indicate a variation in the perception of preparedness across hazards, at the individual level. Additionally, most respondents would use emerging technology to help them improve their disaster preparedness, including smart speakers, phones, mobile appliances, cars, wearable devices, robots, and virtual reality devices. Findings indicate that older adults may be willing to use emerging technology that they are uncomfortable with for disaster preparedness, necessitating training, exercises, and qualitative research to understand how and whyItem Mobile Applications in Epidemic Management: A Comprehensive Taxonomy(2025-01-07) Zajac, Kimsey; Klein, Julia; Eißfeldt, Charlotte Johanna; Kolbe, LutzEpidemics have always impaired humankind. One way to facilitate and enhance epidemic management is by leveraging mobile health technology by improving monitoring, surveillance and public awareness. However, the existing landscape of mobile health solutions for epidemic management is largely unstructured, with no existing classification system in place. To address this, we developed a taxonomy based on the analysis of 117 mobile Health apps for epidemic management and relevant literature and performed a cluster analysis of available apps. The taxonomy consists of two meta-dimensions: epidemic management context and mobile application context. The taxonomy may serve IS researchers, public health decision makers, and app developers as a basis for future analyses of epidemic management apps.Item How on Earth Do We Get Food on the Table? - An Explorative Study of the Scattered Open Government Data in the Food System and Local Crises Management(2025-01-07) Wihlborg, Elin; Hamberg, SofiaThe food system covers all parts, from farm to fork, and is a complex system of private and public partnerships. The system generates, builds on, and uses several sets of big data. This open government data is scattered, generated by market actors and partly framed through government control. This paper explores potentials to manage open government data more transparently, especially regarding the locations and functions of the food system and elaborates on the design of crises management in regard to open government data on the food system in Sweden. To investigate this, we have conducted focus group workshops with local stakeholders and found that the available data are far from comprehensive and compatible. We designed a dummy platform of crises management support on open government data on food. Our analysis shows that the lack of useful and compatible data constrains the possibilities to build a useful platform for crises preparation.Item Mining Local Social Media Data for Public Information Work: Insights from the COVID-19 Pandemic(2025-01-07) St. Denis, Lise Ann; Hughes, AmandaDuring crisis events, social media have become important communication channels, but the sheer volume of public-generated data can challenge those managing public information. This paper explores how social media posts from individuals local to a crisis can provide valuable insights. Using a case study of Twitter activity from Colorado during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, we categorize tweets into three main areas: reports on COVID-19, discussions on social distancing, and conversations about the broader effects of the pandemic. These tweets provided insight into how people were responding, including posts they found confusing, misinterpretations of data, and the spread of misinformation and false rumors. Results demonstrate the need for those responsible for public information work to engage with and respond to local perspectives and concerns in their messaging.Item Are “Crisis Information Support Systems” Barrier-Free? Analysis of Technology-Induced Barriers to Situational Awareness(2025-01-07) Nesse, Kirsti N.; Foss, Sindre B.; Gjøsæter, Terje; Radianti, JaziarSituational disabilities when using information systems can cause negative consequences to the crisis management actors, such as establishing situational awareness and making effective and accurate decisions. This paper identifies such situational awareness barriers of information systems through a qualitative approach. Barriers experienced while using information systems were reported and systematized based on the interview with 14 crisis responders from police, health, and fire services at the tactical and operational level. The coding and analysis of the collected data resulted in a total of 43 barriers and themes. All barriers were categorized into one of the following overarching themes: Cognitive, Physical and Technological. The data analysis revealed instances of cause-and-effect relations between some of the barriers, meaning that the occurrence of one barrier could cause or amplify other barriers. The findings provide useful insight for further research and practice by highlighting aspects of information systems in crisis response that should be considered to improve situational awareness.Item Survey of Social Support Networks and Evacuation Intentions among Households in Houston, Texas(2025-01-07) Grace, Rob; Pang, Feifei; Na, Hyeong SukThis study reports findings from a survey investigating Houston households’ social support networks: family and friends who can provide them with temporary accommodations during a hurricane or other disaster-related evacuation. Findings can inform the development of information systems for evacuation management by describing households’ social support network characteristics and evacuation destination and accommodation intentions, as well as the factors these households consider when choosing an evacuation destination. Highlights include differences in the size and range of household social support networks, and the relative tendency of households without social support to lack evacuation plans and prefer hotels/motels and public shelters compared to households with social support. These findings can inform the design of information systems that simulate and predict large-scale evacuation behavior for different geographic and evacuation contexts.Item A Framework for Constructing Agent-based Models for Evaluating Emergency Evacuation Procedures; A Case Study Applied to Egaleo, Greece(2025-01-07) Moradi, Hossein; Iskandar, Rouba; Rodriguez, Sebastian; Singh, Dhirendra; Dugdale, Julie; Tzempelikos, Dimitrios; Sfetsos, AthanasiosPlanning and preparing for evacuations of populations during emergencies requires a multifaceted approach covering the essential concerns of understanding hazard risk, preparing critical infrastructure for egress and shelter, determining the makeup of the population at risk, understanding how that population will respond in the event of an emergency, and developing robust evacuation procedures and policies. While tools and methods often exist for understanding these concerns separately, these do not allow decision-makers to systematically understand their inter-connections and the implication of change in one dimension on the other. To address this challenge, we introduce a comprehensive framework tailored to support emergency management decision makers in the evaluation of community evacuation plans and procedures. Central to our approach is the use of micro-simulations that model known human behaviours in emergencies for evacuating populations. Our framework encompasses the five dimensions of Infrastructure, Population Demographics, Evacuation Policy, Hazard Model, and Human Behavior Model, and allow users to systematically build "what-if" scenarios that introduce changes in different dimensions to test the robustness of evacuation policies. We present a case study of employing this framework in Egaleo, Greece, a seismic-prone region, as part of the European HORIZON project C2IMPRESS, in collaboration with local government. We showcase the effectiveness and relevance of our approach in enhancing emergency response strategies within dynamic and high-stakes environments.Item Tourists as a Vulnerable Group in Emergency Management: An Air Raid and Shelter Scenario(2025-01-07) Radianti, Jaziar; Policarpus, Stella; Gjøsæter, TerjeVulnerable groups in society are particularly important and have been addressed in many emergency management scenarios, as well as how to save them. However, this concept is often associated with old people, children, and people with disabilities. We considered how millions of tourists in Europe potentially could be a vulnerable group with situational disabilities in case of air raid attacks. The Ukraine-Russian war has witnessed new technologies to attack civilians from air, and public bomb shelters are important safety measures to be considered. We discuss behavioral, environmental, affective, social and technological situational disabilities in all sensory aspects as well as biases tourists have. We concluded that disaster alert information systems in Europe must consider multiculturalism and language barriers tourists bring into air-raid sheltering, as this type of response is not included in fire trills, floodings or earthquake response plans. We propose a framework to strengthen the emergency management plan that affects tourists, alongside metrics to measure biases using technologies.Item Introduction to the Minitrack on Disaster Information, Resilience, for Emergency and Crisis Technologies(2025-01-07) Negre, Elsa; Radianti, Jaziar; Gjøsæter, Terje; Benaben, Frederick; Dugdale, Julie