Crisis Management

This paper outlines research conducted into CW systems in New South Wales (NSW) state government Emergency Service Agencies. This research highlights a unified collaborative approach to the assessment, development, deployment and use of Community Warning systems that is based on crisis management theory. This approach could be utilised by governments at federal, state and local levels for cross border and jurisdictional management of ESA informational, ICT and process resources.

This report examines four different issue areas to analyze how social media is used in the context of risk and crisis communication. These areas include: public safety and preparedness; emergency warnings, alerts and requests for assistance; recovery efforts; and, finally, monitoring and situational awareness. In the context of each of these areas, it highlights the key literature and real-life examples to explore the risks vs. opportunities in the utility of social media. These four areas capture the role of engagement and strategy in both the risk and crisis space.

This study sets out to understand how social media is being used in disaster and emergency situations. Research thus far has established the importance of social media in disaster and crisis communication but neglects to describe why social media are important. To establish best practices of social media use in a disaster and why they should be used, this study interviewed six communication or social media experts in the field of disaster relief.

This paper proposes a geo spatial information repository for initial condition reporting and updating to guide search and rescue operations and deployment of equipment with safety considerations for the rescuers in large scale disaster response scenarios.

With the increase in humanitarian crises and consequent aid, there is greater demand for evidence of the effectiveness and accountability of aid. Information Systems (ISs) are critical for emergency response and humanitarian operations in fulfilling these demands, but also because the consequences of having or not having timely and accurate data are usually life and death. IS innovation in the context of the humanitarian sector highlights the need for contextbased approaches to innovation.

Climate change presents two types of disaster threat in developing countries. One is the potentially devastating impact on vulnerable communities of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events. This contributes to the second threat, the compounding of what are already complex development problems leading to a potential downward development spiral for the world’s poor. Effective disaster response demands rapid access to reliable and accurate data and the capacity to assess, analyse and integrate information from varied sources. ICTs can contribute to improve this.

Cities and counties are experienced in emergency preparation, but not with social media. While the overall trend of social media use has grown, local governments have been much slower to embrace this new technology. This paper explores how six local governments in the United States (Evanston, Illinois; Johnson County, Kansas; Moorhead, Minnesota; Fort Bend County, Texas; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Alexandria, Virginia) use social media to prepare for and respond to emergencies.