Survey: ICT-supported public participation in disasters

In an increasingly networked society citizens at disaster sites utilize information and communication technology (ICT) to communicate needs or to share information. In order to understand better emergent possibilities and implications of applying ICT for supporting public participation in disasters, we surveyed 57 respondents regarding several key user aspects as perceived usefulness, socially related issues, or deployment. Surprisingly, our results show a clear tendency to use a disaster specific application instead of using everyday services as facebook or Twitter. However, such application poses the risk to loose its focus fading slowly away after once downloading it. Further study is needed to understand if these results are representative regarding public society.