Emergency Information Management & Disaster Preparedness on the Internet

Abstract

This is an initial inventory of advantages and disadvantages of use of the Internet for information dissemination purposes during emergencies, crises or disasters. It consists of case studies of two recent earthquakes. "The" Internet withstood, while radio stations did not and electricity and telephone networks kept breaking down. Increased emergency use of the Internet in the future brings up questions of information quality and reliability and indicates the importance of investigating this medium further as a communication channel for crisis situations.

This article is a slightly modified version of a conference paper presented at "IDA Fifth Annual Conference on Computer and Information Science" at Linköping University, Nov 22, 1995.