Volunteers in Crisis and Emergency Management

Sufficient emergency resources are essential for emergency services to provide timely assistance to affected people and minimise damage to public and private assets and the environment. Emergency services, however, face resource shortages and increasing demand. As a result, response times increase, reducing the survival chances of affected people and increasing damage to property and the environment. During major crises and disasters such as earthquakes, already limited resources are often insufficient to manage the situation in the best possible manner. Emergency services must therefore use and manage all available resources effectively, including traditional resources such as ambulances and emerging resources such as volunteers.

In certain crises, citizen and community engagement is essential for effective crisis management. The importance of volunteerism and civil defence—civilian participation in preparedness, mitigation, and response—has been recognised for decades and is again highlighted by events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and earthquakes, floods, storms, and wildfires intensified by climate change. Emergency responders must also attend to frequent smaller emergencies, including house fires, medical emergencies, accidents, and traffic incidents. In these circumstances, volunteers and trained civilians can make an important difference in first response, emphasising the role of society as a whole in saving lives.

Engaging citizens in emergency management is not without challenges. It requires consideration of social, economic, and cultural factors such as motivation, responsibilities, funding, coordination, information dissemination, and training. Volunteers also need to be trained and integrated into crisis-management preparedness, response, and recovery and into emergency-management operations. Both professional and volunteer responders must adapt their practices to realise the benefits of available information and communication technologies and the spontaneous initiatives these technologies can support.

This track showcases current research on how volunteers can support crisis and emergency management and civil defence through information and communication technologies, artificial intelligence, information platforms, and decision models, and examines the associated needs, challenges, and solutions. The track is broad and welcomes papers providing rich descriptions or evaluations of volunteer integration and the design, development, and use of related technological support.

Topics of Interest

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Community-led disaster-risk reduction and Indigenous early-warning systems.
• Technological and communication resilience in isolated and remote areas.
• Cross-sector collaboration and multi-agency coordination during remote emergency response.
• Design, development, use, and evaluation of information and communication technologies that support volunteers in crisis and emergency response.
• Decision models for managing volunteers in crisis and emergency response.
• Citizen and community integration in emergency and disaster response and preparedness for a stronger future.
• Social media, crowdsourcing, and citizen initiatives.
• Digitalisation and digital co-production.
• Volunteer logistics and preparedness.
• Novel technologies for volunteers as first responders.
• Forms of volunteerism, including the public, bystanders, spontaneous volunteers, and semi-organised and organised volunteers.
• Volunteer coordination and information-systems support.
• Volunteerism during pandemics and vaccination campaigns.
• Specialisation and dynamic resource allocation of volunteers for optimised response.
• Building resilience in civil society and civil defence.

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