Year: 2016
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Disasters and their impacts have unavoidable spatial characteristics. As such, maps are necessary and omnipresent features of the information landscapes that surround and support disaster response. Professional and volunteer GIS services are increasingly in demand to support map-based information visualization during crises. This paper investigates the work of mapmakers working on the response to the 2015 Nepal earthquakes. In comparison to prior events, we found significantly more collaboration and spatial data sharing took place between map producers working across humanitarian organizations and parts of the Nepal government. Collaboration between mapping practitioners was supported by a complex and emergent information infrastructure composed of social and technical elements, some of which were brought through experience with prior disaster events, and some which were shaped anew by the availability and acceptance of open data sources. Our research investigates these elements of the spatial information infrastructure in post-earthquake Nepal to consider infrastructural emergence.
Authors: Robert Soden, Leysia Palen
Institution: University of Colorado Boulder
Language: English
Subfield: Geography, Planning and Development
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Awards: HCC: Large: Collaborative Research: Widescale Computer-Mediated Communication in Crisis Response: Roles, Trust & Accuracy in the Social Distribution of Information, RIPS Type 1: The Interdependence of Built, Social and Information Infrastructures for Community Resilience: A Participatory Process, CHS: Small: The Future of Geospatial Data: The Analytics and Implications of Open Source Mapping
OpenAlex ID: W2394927023