Conceptualizing smart disaster governance: An integrative conceptual framework

The discourse of disaster governance is focused on the arrangements, relationships, and roles of the various actors involved in disaster governance. However, due to the lack of research on utilizing emerging technologies in disaster governance systems, this paper addresses the prospective benefits of utilizing Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in smart disaster governance systems. The authors employed a conceptual analysis of the previous research on disaster governance and utilizing IoT in disaster management. The basic concepts and constructs were abstracted from the literature to conceptualize a smart disaster governance system and its processes. As a result, six spheres were portrayed to form the characteristics of the smart disaster governance system, and an integrative conceptual framework for smart disaster governance was developed. The conceptual framework encompasses IoT technologies’ capabilities and disaster governance functions, in addition to the foreseen enhancements in disaster coping capacities and an overall rise in disaster resilience. A hypothetical case study was conducted to investigate the conceptual framework’s plausibility, and it showed a probable enhancement of the disaster governance of the 2018 Kerala floods if the smart disaster governance framework was utilized. This research provides a novel conceptualization of smart disaster governance. It can deepen the understanding of prospective benefits of integrating IoT technologies with disaster governance functions, contribute to disaster governance policy formulations, and construct a basis for future research on smart disaster governance for a sustainable society.