Technological Mediation for Disaster Risk Management

Abstract

This special issue focuses on technology as a conduit for mediating the production and exchange of information and knowledge in disaster risk management. Technology now acts as an essential mediating infrastructure for communication and collaboration among stakeholders at multiple levels and scales, throughout all phases of a disaster management cycle. Today, professional disaster management systems and bottom-up, volunteer initiatives processes increasingly rely on digital data, information communication technology (ICT), social media platforms and geospatial information to assess risks, organize recovery efforts, and perform early warnings (Boersma & Fonio, 2018; Meier, 2015; Reuter et al., 2018; Sakurai & Murayama, 2019; Qadir et al., 2016). Technologies furthermore enable and facilitate collective learning processes, thereby broadening our understanding of disaster events and strengthening our response to them (Albris, 2018; Benedikte et al., 2016; Capelo et al., 2012). At the same time, the increased use and reliance on technological mediation in disaster management processes create new and potentially unforeseen challenges, such as the interoperability, usability and reliability of data (Ahmad, 2014; Kaufhold et al., 2019; Mendoza et al., 2010), as well as the ethical and political implications of its use (Burns, 2015; McDonald, 2019; Mulder et al., 2016; Soden & Palen, 2018; Watson & Rodrigues, 2018). From this point of departure, this special issue addresses the evolving socio-technical nexus, in which technology, through mediation, has the dual potential to support and erode effective disaster risk management processes. The collection of papers cut across sociological and technological domains provides unique interdisciplinary approaches for understanding and addressing disasters. Rather than providing in-depth explorations into theory or method, the papers are concerned with the study of empirical examples of technological mediation from different perspectives. Indeed, each paper in this special issue has been selected owing to the scope of the case study followed by the authors’ disciplinary approach. In this way, the papers aim to inform, balance, and challenge the overall practicality of technological mediation in disaster management processes, while reaching a broad audience, be they researchers, policy makers, practitioners and others. The first two papers in this volume—Any Portal in a Storm? Collaborative and crowdsourced maps in response to Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan, Philippines, and Humanitarian Data Justice: A structural data justice lens on civic technologies in post-earthquake Nepal—address technological mediation through a social-political lens, by examining group dynamics, and collective social actions harnessed through ICT infrastructures and online mediums, such as social media and crowdsourced mapping platforms. These activities are changing, and in some ways replacing, traditional disaster risk management processes, while simultaneously empowering new types of actors. Nevertheless, both papers find that the optimism and promise surrounding these developments may presently outweigh their effectiveness. In paper one, Cate Turk (2020) provides a critical examination of the crisis mapping processes and outputs following Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan, and finds significant limitations in both data collection and cartographic practices of the crowdsourcing community. The questions she raises around the reliability and usefulness of externally sourced data for disaster response, feed into paper two, drawing attention to pre-existing and emerging inequalities for affected communities in data-related projects for disaster risk management. Here, Femke Mulder (2020) uses post-earthquake Nepal as a case study to explore digital and virtual divides among different groups in disasters. By bridging perspectives on social capital (Lin et al., 2001; Van de Walle & Comes, 2015), e-resilience (Ospina & Heeks, 2010) and data jus