A self-organizing communication model for disaster risk management

Abstract

Pandemic, industrial accidents, geological and meteorological hazards, airplane crashes, and bombings cause the death of tens to thousands of people and lead to severe damage to economy and environment. Previous studies estimated that since the 1990s, 60.000 people, on average, die every year while the lives and livelihoods of other millions are affected. In disaster time, communications between different parties become essential for disaster management. Although some organizations have already started using social media for disaster management, a full adoption by the community is still facing some obstacles. Highlighting the significance of the research issue, this study introduces a self-organizing communication model for disaster risk management. The model proposes the idea of the public is communicating directly to the public through social media tools, which establishes for a self-organizing communication projection that adds both decentrality and independency to its work, with reduced latency, interruptions, and failures in its internal communications. The proposed model can be used in real life scenarios for post-disaster recovery plans.