Risk Reduction in Natural Disaster Management Through Information Systems: A Literature Review and an IS Design Science Research Agenda

Natural disasters, including earthquakes, Tsunamis, floods, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions, have caused tremendous harm and continue to threaten millions of humans and various infrastructure capabilities each year. In their efforts to take countermeasures against the threats posed by future natural disasters, the United Nations formulated the “Hyogo Framework for Action”, which aims at assessing and reducing risk. This framework and a global review of disaster reduction initiatives of the United Nations acknowledge the need for information systems research contributions in addressing major challenges of natural disaster management. In this paper, the authors provide a review of the literature with regard to how information systems research has addressed risk assessment and reduction in natural disaster management. Based on the review the authors identify research gaps that are centered around the need for acquiring general knowledge on how to design IS artifacts for risk assessment and reduction. In order to close these gaps in further research, the authors develop a research agenda that follows the IS design science paradigm.