Social Architecture: An Emergency Management Case Study

Emergency management agencies are progressively using social media for the sourcing and distribution of disaster information. Emergency management agencies are often unsure as to how to best identify and assess social media concerns (e.g. information security, trust) which must be addressed to develop a social media-enabled disaster information management environment. This paper adopts the Social Architecture Viewpoint Assessment (SAVA) framework for identifying and assessing social media concerns from four different viewpoints: IT, Value, Resource and Management. This paper demonstrates the use of the SAVA framework in the context of an in-depth empirical case study of an Australian emergency management agency. The results of this study indicate that the SAVA framework is useful for emergency information management managers in identifying and assessing social media concerns.