Journal ArticleDOI
Information management and humanitarian relief coordination: findings from the Haiti earthquake response
TLDR
The role and use of information management (IM) in these coordination efforts is discussed in this article, where the authors conduct interviews with experienced information managers who participated in the Haiti relief effort.Abstract:
The overwhelming humanitarian impact of the January 2010 Earthquake in Haiti created a tremendous coordination challenge for the humanitarian relief agencies. In this paper, we first describe the coordination mechanisms that are implemented by the United Nations and the role of its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). We introduce the cluster approach, which is instrumental in providing a more efficient and effective coordination in affected disaster areas. The main thrust of our paper is on the role and use of information management (IM) in these coordination efforts. To understand better the benefits and problems of information systems, we conducted interviews with experienced information managers who participated in the Haiti relief effort. While the interviewees saw clear benefits of IM for the coordination of humanitarian relief, concerns related to information overload, reliability and accountability were found to impede the realisation of the full potential of IM.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Big Data in Natural Disaster Management: A Review
Manzhu Yu,Chaowei Yang,Yun Li +2 more
TL;DR: This paper reviews the major big data sources, the associated achievements in different disaster management phases, and emerging technological topics associated with leveraging this new ecosystem of Big Data to monitor and detect natural hazards, mitigate their effects, assist in relief efforts, and contribute to the recovery and reconstruction processes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Cold chains, interrupted: The use of technology and information for decisions that keep humanitarian vaccines cool
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a basic structure for the analysis of cold chain disruptions in terms of three distinct yet connected layers of deficient infrastructure and capacity, information gaps and failures in decision making.
Journal ArticleDOI
Making sense of crises: the implications of information asymmetries for resilience and social justice in disaster-ridden communities
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe how new information and communication technologies (ICT) have enabled communities to collect and share information and tap into a network of peers in unprecedented ways, and how they have enabled them to collect, share and access information.
Beyond the myth of control: Toward network switching in disaster management
TL;DR: How response organizations can relinquish their reliance on control and command approaches, and increase their adaptive capacity to capitalize on citizen-based information is suggested.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ethics of emergent information and communication technology applications in humanitarian medical assistance
TL;DR: Ethical challenges and uncertainties associated with the development and application of new ICTs in humanitarian medical assistance are discussed, including avoiding harm, ensuring privacy and security, responding to inequalities, demonstrating respect, protecting relationships, and addressing expectations.
References
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Journal Article
Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research
TL;DR: The authors examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars.
Journal ArticleDOI
Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research
TL;DR: The authors examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge, one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development, the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building, case study contains a bias toward verification, and it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies.
Journal ArticleDOI
A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems
Heinz K. Klein,Michael D. Myers +1 more
TL;DR: A set of principles for the conduct and evaluation of interpretive field research in information systems is proposed, along with their philosophical rationale, and the usefulness of the principles is illustrated by evaluating three publishedinterpretive field studies drawn from the IS research literature.
Journal ArticleDOI
Interpretive case studies in IS research: nature and method
TL;DR: The paper aims to provide a useful reference point for researchers who wish to work in the interpretive tradition, and more generally to encourage careful work on the conceptualisation and execution of case studies in the information systems field.
Journal ArticleDOI
Doing interpretive research
TL;DR: The nature of interpretive IS case studies and methods for doing such research are addressed, with a widened scope of all interpretive research in IS, and through further material on carrying out fieldwork, using theory and analysing data.
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