Technologies Enabling Situational Awareness During Disaster Response: A Systematic Review

Situational awareness (SA) is critical to mobilizing a rapid, efficient, and effective response to disasters. Limited by time and resources, response agencies must make decisions about rapidly evolving situations, which requires the collection, analysis, and sharing of actionable information across...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inDisaster medicine and public health preparedness Vol. 16; no. 1; pp. 341 - 359
Main Authors Kedia, Tara, Ratcliff, Jeremy, O’Connor, Megan, Oluic, Sophia, Rose, Michelle, Freeman, Jeff, Rainwater-Lovett, Kaitlin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.02.2022
Subjects
Decision making
Disaster management
Disasters
Emergency preparedness
R&D
Research & development
Systematic Review
Technology
situational awareness
multi-agency coordination
emergency responders
technology
disaster response
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Situational awareness (SA) is critical to mobilizing a rapid, efficient, and effective response to disasters. Limited by time and resources, response agencies must make decisions about rapidly evolving situations, which requires the collection, analysis, and sharing of actionable information across a complex landscape. Emerging technologies, if appropriately applied, can enhance SA and enable responders to make quicker, more accurate decisions. The aim of this systematic review is to identify technologies that can improve SA and assist decision-making across the United States Government and the domestic and international agencies they support during disaster response operations. A total of 1459 articles and 36 after-action reports were identified during literature searches. Following the removal of duplicates and application of inclusion/exclusion criteria, 302 articles and after-action reports were included in the review. Our findings suggest SA is constrained primarily due to unreliable and significantly delayed communications, time-intensive data analysis and visualization, and a lack of interoperable sensor networks and other capabilities providing data to shared platforms. Many of these challenges could be addressed by existing technologies. Bridging the divide between research and development efforts and the operational needs of response agencies should be prioritized.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-3
content type line 23
ObjectType-Review-1
ObjectType-Undefined-4
ISSN:1935-7893
1938-744X
DOI:10.1017/dmp.2020.196