Preparedness and Response in the Century of Disasters: Overview of Information Systems Research Frontiers

“The Century of Disasters” refers to the increased frequency, complexity, and magnitude of natural and man-made disasters witnessed in the 21st century: the impact of such disasters is exacerbated by infrastructure vulnerabilities, population growth/urbanization, and a challenging policy landscape. Technology-enabled disaster management (TDM) has an important role to play in the Century of Disasters. We highlight four important trends related to TDM, smart technologies and resilience, digital humanitarianism, integrated decision-support and agility, and artificial intelligence–enabled early warning systems, and how the confluence of these trends lead to four research frontiers for information systems researchers. We describe these frontiers, namely the technology-preparedness paradox, socio-technical crisis communication, predicting and prescribing under uncertainty, and fair pipelines, and discuss how the eight articles in the special section are helping us learn about these frontiers.

History: Senior editor, Suprateek Sarker.

Funding: This study was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) [Grants 2240347 and IIS-2039915]. H. R. Rao is also supported in part by the NSF [Grant 2020252]. The usual disclaimer applies.