Disaster Information, Technology, and Resilience

Minitrack Description

The 21st Century has been termed "the century of disasters." Worldwide there were twice as many disasters and catastrophes in the first decade of this century as in the last decade of the 20th Century. All continents are affected, both directly and indirectly. And the trend continues, fuelled by climate change, demographic changes and social dynamics. The serious challenges facing government in cities, regions and nations of the world relate to acute shocks (such as forest fires, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, pandemics and terrorist attacks) and chronic stresses (such as high unemployment, religious extremism, inefficient public transport systems, endemic violence, chronic shortages of food and water).

Information is among the key life-supporting essentials in a disaster response, as well as water and basic foods which are vital to sustain lives. It is information technology these days that gives us access to most of this information. We rely greatly on it. In this sense, information management with effective use of information systems should be conducted and evaluated among disaster relief agencies. Successful information management will result in making higher situational awareness in a field that is crucial for a disaster response. It also guides us to build a disaster-resilient community which can adapt the society to those unexpected events. These issues should be tackled at each level of the governance (international, national, regional, local, etc.), and with regards to all relevant dimensions (social, technological, interoperability, agility, etc.). This minitrack features government and disaster information management, including the development of disaster resilience communities/societies.

We invite papers that deal with any aspect of the analysis, design, development, deployment, implementation, integration, operation, use or evaluation of ICT for discussing government roles for disaster responses, disaster information management, and resilience communities. In addition, we support innovative and break-through visions regarding disaster information, technology, and resilience.

Minitrack topics include, but are not limited to:

• Government's disaster preparedness - disaster management plan, business continuity plan for technology use
• Disaster information management for all stages of disaster - preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery
• Situational awareness among key stakeholders
• Real-time data analysis for government's decision making
• Vertical management of information (from very local to the highest governmental level)
• International disaster response collaborations including government organizations
• Citizen/Volunteers engagement to disaster responses
• Disaster communications with government organizations
• Disaster data recovery regarding public information
• Functional and technological expectations for disaster management inside governmental organizations
• Government's role in resilient communities
• Ground security / homeland security
• Antifragility of systems and territories

More information on the minitrack chairs:

Frederick Benaben is a full Professor in Information Systems for collaborative situations at IMT Mines Albi, France. He received a M. Engineering (1998), a M. Sc. (1998), a PhD in Computer Sciences (2001), a Qualification as Assistant-Professor (2003), an Habilitation as Research Director (2012) and a Qualification as Professor (2013). He is the Head of the IO research team (Interoperability of Organizations - 30 persons), lecturer and researcher in the fields of Collaborative Networks and Information System Interoperability. Research activities concern: (i) Covering abstraction layers of information systems management: data (gathering), information (interpretation) and knowledge (exploitation), (ii) Covering the life cycle of collaborations: define (modeling), enact (orchestration) and maintain (agility). The used approaches directly inherit from model-driven engineering. During the last 15 years, he published 20 articles in International Journals and more than 150 conference articles. He has supervised or directed 20 PhD, 10 M. Sc. and 9 post-doctoral positions. He has been involved in 12 collaborative funded projects (European/French 3 as coordinator for almost 3M€ funding), and he has been invited for 9 keynote speeches.

Mihoko Sakurai is an Associate Professor at University of Agder (Norway), Department of information systems. Her academic background is Information Systems and Policy Design. She received her PhD from the Keio University's Graduate School of Media and Governance in Japan. She has studied effective ways of using Information Communication Technology in Japan's municipal governments. After the devastating Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, she conducted field research and designed information systems to enhance the handling of future and unexpected disasters, especially for municipalities which have to deliver disaster relief operations to their residents. She is also an affiliate of Keio University as a researcher. Currently she is working on the notion of resilience and how information systems can support this. Her works related to the earthquake won the Best paper award at ITU Kaleidoscope conference (2013) and HICSS (2016). Her works has also been published in IEEE communications magazine, IJISCRAM (International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management), Communications of AIS, and ICIS (International Conference on Information Systems).

Andrea H. Tapia is an Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University in the United States of America. Dr. Tapia is a scholar of Crisis Informatics. She studies information discovery, needs, use and sharing in disaster settings. She also develops and studies information analysis tools, information devices and services in disaster settings. Dr. Tapia seeks to develop information and communication technology solutions that promote better decision-making across all responders. Dr. Tapia's most recent work focuses on making data generated by individuals or social networks via mobile information technologies useful to decision-makers within large institutions.