Disaster Management and HCI: A Critical Review of Current Research and Future Directions

The increasing frequency of disasters in the past few decades have threatened individual life and situation. Therefore, there is a growing research interest in the development and practice of disaster management systems. Disaster management systems help understand and support disaster relief, preparation, recovery, rehabilitation, risk, and vulnerability reduction to assist professionals from diverse backgrounds. These professionals can range from medical personnel, government staff, firefighters, military personnel, emergency call center operatives, and volunteers. When a disaster occurs, it becomes challenging and essential for these professionals to manage and coordinate the available resources. Thus, efficient communication and the availability of information are crucial. An effective system with an adequate HCI to assist these first responders in coordinating tasks can save time and individual life, which might not be possible without a well-defined user interface for interaction. HCI plays an essential role in supporting disaster response scenarios through disaster management systems. Though there is a rising number of researches in this area, it still lacks a complete HCI overview for disaster management systems. Hence, this chapter examines and analyzes research on the concept of human-computer interaction (HCI) in the disaster management context. It provides an overview of HCI and disaster management publications between 2009 and 2019 by presenting the current practices and identifying the lapses in how research is conducted and recommendations for opportunities in future approaches.