Mapping Undermined Role of Information and Communication Technologies in Floods

This paper reports the undermined potential of broad range of (Information and communication technologies) ICTs that remained effective yet unnoticed in different flood-phases to exchange traffic, travel, and evacuation related information. The objective was to identify convenient ICTs that people found operational in life cycle of a flood. For the purpose, ICTs were tested in relation to 18 different variables based on personal capabilities, demographic, and vehicle-based information etc.

Samples of 105 and 102 subjects were recruited from flood-prone communities of developing and developed case-studies respectively, through random sampling and analyzed through Multinomial Logistic Regression. Those categories of independent variables that showed p-value ≥ 0.05 were considered to model the results. The main findings showed that in developed countries TV, mobile phone subscriptions and international news channels were prominent source of information whilst in developing countries multiple messengers, Facebook and contributory websites were impactful for information dissemination. The results are useful for academia, engineers, and policy makers and for future work same variables can be tested for different disaster affected communities.