Crisis Informatics

Chris Hagar (2006) coined the phrase crisis informatics to describe an emerging field of research that examines how people, information, organizations, and technology are interconnected during a crisis. More specifically, crisis informatics examines the utilization of information and communication technology during mass emergencies. Crisis informatics reaches beyond crises because mass emergencies include disasters and other large-scale societal emergencies. The research includes understanding how first responders employ technology and how people in the community utilize technology during mass emergencies. For example, studies might examine how fire fighters integrate [Page 225]technology into their responses or how citizens utilize Twitter to both send and receive information during an emergency.

The roots of crisis informatics can be traced back to 2004. In Brussels of that year, the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) held its first meeting. It focused on the use of technology in crises and disasters drawing interest from researchers in computer and information sciences. In 2009, ISCRAM became a formal organization that holds international meetings regularly and developed its own publication. A search on an Internet search engine of the term crisis informatics results in many hits for papers presented at ISCRAM conferences.

The growing research interest in crisis informatics and funding of that research is testimony to the rapid development of this field. In the United States, the Natural Science Foundation provided a $2.8 million grant for Empowering the Public with Information during a Crisis, better known as Project EPIC. Project EPIC is led by researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder and University of California, Irvine and includes researchers from information sciences, computer sciences, and computational linguistics. One of the research lines in Project EPIC is “Tweak the Tweet” (TtT). TtT seeks to prove a shared hashtag-based syntax that makes it easier to extract emergency information from Tweets. The idea is that the increased information from Tweets can improve the emergency response. TtT combines both citizen and emergency responder use of information and communication technology.

The European Union continues to fund a variety of crisis informatics projects. One such project, WORKPAD (funded at €1.85 million), developed software applications that allow emergency responders to communicate and to coordinate their efforts more effectively and quickly during a crisis. The focus on improving emergency responses demonstrates how crisis informatics can be translated into lifesaving applications.