13. Conclusion and Future Work

Almost two decades of mobile technology and social media usage in crises led to the emergence and steadily foundation of crisis informatics, which is a research field combining computing and social science knowledge of disasters to improve ICT-supported crisis management and response. In order to utilise these sources of social big data for the situational awareness, crisis communication, and decision making of emergency services, available information must be refined according to event-based factors, organizational requirements, societal boundary conditions, and technical feasibility. This dissertation combined the methodological framework of design case studies with principles of design science research to research technologies for information refinement focusing mobile crisis apps and social media. These extended design case studies comprised the four phases of theoretical reviews, empirical pre-studies, design of supportive ICT, and evaluation of ICT appropriation. This conclusion will outline main findings of the dissertation by answering the initial research questions. Furthermore, it will delimit and discuss empirical and theoretical contributions followed by design and practical contributions using the HCI research contribution typology of Wobbrock and Kientz, which differentiates empirical, artefact, methodological, theoretical, dataset, survey, and opinion contributions. The conlusion finishes with the discussion of limitations and future work.