The Technology Crisis in US-based Emergency Management: Toward a Well-Connected Future

Abstract

For many years, CI has tried to show the value of computational techniques for response to hazard events but has yet to see success outside of post-hoc analyses. Meanwhile, emergency management (EM) has been struggling to cope with the impact of computation. This duality wherein we know technology can be useful yet also complicates EM (and has not yet been fully integrated into EM) is what we dub the technology crisis in EM. To begin to address this crisis and revitalize CI, we argue that it is necessary to develop an inventory of what technologies EM is competent with and to design training that can extend that competency. This research reports a survey of EM Practitioners in the United States. We offer one of the first inventories of EM technologies and technological skills and identify how current EM technological integration issues are a crisis.