Big Data and Emergency Management: Concepts, Methodologies, and Applications

Recent decades have seen a significant increase in the frequency, intensity, and impact of natural disasters and other emergencies, forcing the governments around the world to make emergency response and disaster management national priorities. The growth of extremely large and complex datasets — commonly referred to as big data — and various advances in information and communications technology and computing now support more effective approaches to humanitarian relief, logistical coordination, overall disaster management, and long-term recovery in connection with natural disasters and emergency events. Leveraging big data and technological advances for emergency management has attracted considerable attention in the research community. However, the desired merging of big data and emergency management (BDEM) requires coordinated efforts to align and define interdisciplinary terminologies and methodologies. To date, the key concepts and technologies in this emerging research area have not been coherently discussed in a sufficiently broad and multidisciplinary manner. In this article, an international team presents an overview of the BDEM domain, highlighting a general framework and discussing key challenges from several perspectives. We introduce and summarize typical technologies and applications, organized into the six broad categories. Finally, we outline several directions of future research.