The use of information and communication technologies in emergency management: A systematic review

Abstract

This article provides an overall picture of the governments’ experiences with using ICTs for managing emergencies, by conducting a systematic review of 20 peer-reviewed journal articles selected out of a pool of 291 articles due to being most relevant. To this end, these journal articles are analyzed according to their research motivations, methods and practical implications, with the objective of reaching some meta-conclusions by answering the research questions of (i) how governments use ICTs to address emergencies, (ii) the critical success factors in this endeavor and (iii) the outcomes of using ICTs in emergency management. The analysis has revealed that regarding ICT use before, during or after emergencies, new technologies and concepts such as social media applications, emergency decision-support systems, big and open data, data simplification and visualization have the potential to transform emergency management activities by making them easier, faster, more interactive and less costly. Governments, emergency management experts and scholars should keep criteria such as the extent of and emphasis on (especially spatial) information sharing, intra and inter-agency interoperability, maintaining the balance between openness and security, (re)usability of data, equality of access, interactivity, coordination, standardization, contingency planning and protection of genuine human interaction in mind while designing, using and evaluating the use of ICTs in emergency management. © Eric W. Welch 2021.