Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Disaster Risk Management (DRM): Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Disasters are considered a major problem worldwide and a significant threat to sustainable development, causing, among others, the loss of lives, the destruction of infrastructure, economic disruption. The implementation of policies and strategies that will prevent future disaster risk, reduce existing disaster risk, and manage residual risk has become more vital than ever. It requires multi-sector collaboration to achieve enhanced resilience to the multiple hazards to prevent and/or reduce the potential losses, assure prompt assistance to victims of disasters, and achieve rapid and effective recovery. Such an approach demands collaboration between scientists and authorities and proper use of the available information so that the steps to be taken can be understood and processed by all the stakeholders involved. The utilization of disaster risk information, along with the use of more sophisticated ICTs, will provide policymakers with a holistic DRM, enabling decision support for a natural and/or man-made crisis. To that end, the key objective of this study was to conduct a Systematic Literature Review to highlight the existing research approaches in ICT for DRM. To analyze and evaluate the findings, the selected studies were classified according to four areas: (1) Stakeholders, (2) Disaster phase, (3) Disaster type, and (4) ICT. Additionally, a SWOT analysis was conducted to provide a holistic overview of ICTs and their applications in the DRM sector. Hence, our work attempts to present a comprehensive analysis of the research approaches and determines the arising opportunities and shortcomings that require the attention of the research community.