A Framework for Collaborative Disaster Response: A Grounded Theory Approach

Our society faces many natural and man-made disasters which can have severe impact in terms of deaths, injuries, monetary losses, psychological distress, and economic effects. Society needs to find ways to prevent or reduce the negative impact of these disasters as much as possible. Information systems have been used to assist emergency response to a certain degree in some cases. However, there continues to be a need to develop more effective collaborative disaster response systems. To identify the core features of such systems, a grounded theory research method is used for data collection and analysis. Data from firsthand interviews and observations was combined with literature and analyzed to discover several emergent issues and concepts regarding collaborative disaster response. The issues and concepts were organized into four categories: (i) context-awareness; (ii) multiparty relationships; (iii) task-based coordination; and (iv) information technology support, which together identified the needs of collaborative disaster response coordination. Using evidence from the data, these factors were related to one another to develop a framework for context-aware multi-party coordination systems. This study contributes to the field of emergency management as the framework represents a comprehensive theory for disaster response coordination that can guide future research on disaster management.