Information infrastructures facilitate communication between community stakeholders through a combination of technological and social platforms, and are fundamental to post-disaster recovery. Although post-disaster community resilience is often framed in terms of physical and social infrastructures, information infrastructures serve as a crucial link between stakeholders and critical information needed following a disaster event. During a study of the September, 2013 Boulder, Colorado flooding event, local stakeholders revealed that breakdowns in information infrastructures, known as information deficits, often hindered their perceptions of community disaster resilience. To identify these information deficits, the research team interviewed 14 local government officials, homeowners, and volunteers involved with initial flood response or long-term recovery efforts. Five types of information deficits were differentiated based on these interviews: stakeholder coordination, data management, social disengagement, technical failures, and others. These results have implications for researchers and practitioners in the field of disaster response and recovery, as it identifies post-disaster information deficits that are root causes of vulnerability within information infrastructures.
Arneson, E., Deniz, D., Javernick-Will, A., Liel, A. and Dashti, S. (2016). “Information Deficits and Post-Disaster Recovery." Construction Research Congress. San Juan, Puerto Rico. doi: 10.1061/9780784479827.155