Requirements and Open Issues for ISs Supporting Dynamic Community Bonding in Emergency Situations

Abstract

Abstract. Studies show that in emergency situations, like in the aftermath of natural disasters, people tend to self-organize into so-called ephemeral organizations and transitional communities based on common problems, common places, etc. Strict interactions among victims, fundamental to strengthen such small communities, may be efficiently supported by a new generation of mobile-empowered disaster management systems based on the social networking approach, with crowd-generated and geo-referenced data. In this paper we discuss how a shift of perspective in the interaction, conceptual, logical and physical models adopted for the social network can efficiently support the dynamic bonding/de-bonding/re-bonding of communities that emerge based on alliances around shared problems and/or objectives.Keywords: social network, interaction, emergency management. IntroductionAs the European Environmental Agency (EEA) recently reported [13], the impact of disasters due to natural hazards and technological accidents increased in Europe in the period 1998-2009, with nearly 100000 fatalities, more than 11 million people affected, and economic losses of about EUR 150 billion. In the observed period extreme temperature events caused the highest number of human fatalities, flooding and storms were the most costly hazards, while earthquakes ranked second in terms of fatalities and third in terms of overall losses. EEA observes that the increase in losses can be explained, to a large extent, by higher levels of human activity and accumulation of economic assets in hazard-prone areas and underlines the necessity of measures for risk reduction and management. Although some EU policies have already been adopted or initiated, more effort is needed to implement an Integrated Risk Management approach that includes prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, the four main phases of a cyclic emergency management process [1]. The study discussed in this paper refers in particular to the support that ICT, and Information Systems (ISs) in particular, may provide to response and recovery after natural disasters that cause a massive failure in essential infrastructures and the disruption of the integrity of the affected community. The subject of social and psychological impact of disasters is widely debated in the literature (e.g., [3,4], [6], [14,16,17], [23,24], [29]) and it is generally agreed that one of the most relevant effect of a disaster is the relaxation or, in the worst case, the disruption of the social linkages upon which a community is based. Immaterial damages are less evident (though often more relevant) than material ones and may remain unnoticed for a long period of time. It has to be noticed that, in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, the attention of rescuers is usually captured by the material needs of the victims, leaving sociological and psychological needs usually not addressed or addressed by means of standard protocols unable to reach the entire population.This standard approach for facing emergency is mirror...