Iran J Public Health, Vol. 49, No.10, Oct 2020, pp.

1813-1826 Review Article

Real World Effectiveness of Information and Communication

Technologies in Disaster Relief: A Systematic Review
Bingqing LU 1, Xingyi ZHANG 2, *Jin WEN 3
1. Chinese Evidence-Based Medicine Center, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China
2. Department of Information Engineering, School of Telecommunications Engineering, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China
3. Institute of Hospital Management, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China
*Corresponding Author: Email: [email protected]

(Received 09 Apr 2019; accepted 15 Jul 2019)

Abstract
Background: The application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in disaster relief is in-
creasingly widespread, but it is still unclear whether ICT can reduce casualties and economic losses in disaster
response phase.
Methods: We searched studies in the databases of Scopus, EI, MEDLINE and EMBASE from Jan 1, 1990, to
Mar 22, 2019. Excel 2016 and VOSviewer (version 1.6.11) were used to analyze the extracted data and visualize
the network diagram.
Results: We included 169 eligible articles. The number of ICTs-related disaster-relief articles published annual-
ly shows an overall trend of growth since 1990. The United States has the greatest influence in this field. The
169 articles reported twenty-four technologies and the top three reported most frequently were remote sensing,
social media, and geographic information system (GIS). The main roles of ICTs in natural disaster rescue in-
cluded information dissemination, post-disaster image collection and damage assessment. However, of the 169
articles, only five reported that ICTs reduced casualties or economic losses in disaster response phase, two con-
cluded that rescue robot was ineffective in mudslide rescue, and the remaining 162 (95.86%) did not evaluate
the effect of ICTs on the rescue.
Conclusion: ICTs have the potential to reduce casualties and economic losses, but some technologies are not
applicable to all rescue scenarios. In addition, most studies did not pay attention to the effect of technology on
the rescue.

Keywords: Information and communication technologies (ICTs); Natural disaster; Disaster relief

Introduction
Natural disasters number of people affected by disasters (1, 2).
Natural disasters, including earthquakes, floods From 1990 to 2018, 9426 recorded natural disas-
and tsunamis, have become one of the most seri- ters affected over 5.89 billion people, killing an
ous threats to human health and property. On additional 1.65 million and costing a total of US
the one hand, the frequency of natural disasters $2.95 trillion (3).
has increased due to environmental deterioration.
The increase in population density and the disor- Disaster Management
dered growth of urban areas have increased the

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 Lu et al.: Real World Effectiveness of Information and Communication …

In order to reduce the adverse consequences of mation technology to emphasize the integration
disasters, the field of disaster management of the unified (tele) communications (14). Simi-
emerged (4). Disaster management is the system- larly, information technology (IT) is defined as
atic process of using administrative decisions, "any technology used to support information
organization, operational skills and capacities to gathering, processing, distribution, and use and is
implement policies, strategies and coping capaci- composed of hardware, software, data, and
ties of the society and communities to lessen the communication technology" (15). Telecommuni-
impacts of disasters (5). Usually, the disaster cations is the transmission of symbols, signals,
management period is divided into four stages: messages, words, images, sounds or information
prevention/ mitigation, preparedness, response of any nature through wired, radio, optical or
and recovery, which form a cycle (6, 7). Initially, electromagnetic systems (16). According to Sallai
prevention/ mitigation refers to taking actions to 's definition of ICT, in this study, ICTs refer to
prevent or mitigate the impact of disasters before all information technologies including remote
they occur. Such as building dams, identifying sensing, geographic information system (GIS),
risk areas and disaster education; next, prepared- global positioning system (GPS), radar, radio,
ness is the activities that develop operational ca- email, telephone, short message, video, infor-
pabilities for responding to disasters. It includes mation system, Internet, website, social media,
establishing an early warning system, developing online forum, telemedicine, unmanned aircraft
a disaster response plan; Then response refers to system (UAS), etc.
taking rescue measures to reduce casualties and The objective of this study was to sort out the
economic losses during or after disasters; Finally, published articles on ICTs and natural disaster
post-disaster recovery focuses on mobilizing re- rescue through systematic review, to understand
sources, stabilizing and rebuilding infrastructure the application status and effect of ICTs in disas-
in the affected areas, and restoring normal life for ter response, and provide evidence for the re-
the victims (5,7-10). In recent decades, with the search on rescue effect evaluation of ICTs and
rise of the Internet, information and communica- optimizing ICTs deployment in relief.
tion technologies (ICTs) have played a critical
role in all phases of disaster management, espe- Methods
cially in the response phase (11). However, the
current rescue process is mainly based on experi- This study adopted the method of systematic re-
ence and there is a lack of research on the best view to systematically search, screen and synthe-
practices for ICTs deployment in this phase (11). size the extracted data for articles on the applica-
Therefore, for further research, it is necessary to tion of ICTs in natural disaster rescue. We fol-
fully understand the current application of ICTs lowed the PRISMA statement for the reporting
in rescue. of this systematic review (17). No protocol for
Information and communication technology this systematic review existed or was published
(ICT) as a diverse set of technological tools and beforehand. The PRISMA checklist was used.
resources were defined that can be used to com-
municate, create, disseminate, store and manage Search Strategies
information and knowledge in the global context The electronic databases (Scopus, EI, MED-
(12). In 2002, UNESCO acknowledged that ICTs LINE, EMBASE) were searched by two inde-
include some technologies applied in the collec- pendent researchers from Jan 1, 1990, to Mar 22,
tion, storage, editing, retrieval and transfer of in- 2019. The search terms used in Scopus and EI
formation in various forms, which can be divided are shown in Table 1. Since MEDLINE and
into telecommunication technologies, digital EMBASE only refer to biomedical literature, we
technologies and software applications (13). ICT used "telemedicine" as the representative of ICTs
is considered an extended synonym for infor-

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 Iran J Public Health, Vol. 49, No.10, Oct 2020, pp.1813-1826

to search in the two databases (Table 2). The document type to "journal article" and the lan-
search terms were determined through literature guage to "English".
review (18-25). At the same time, we limited the

Table 1: Search terms used in the databases of Scopus and EI

Operator Search fields and search terms

TITLE-ABS-KEY (disaster OR flood OR cyclone OR drought OR hurricane OR tornado OR typhoon OR
wildfire OR earthquake OR tsunami OR volcano OR landslide OR avalanche OR rainstorm OR epidemic)
AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (ICT OR "Information technolog*" OR "Communication technolog*" OR radio OR
phone OR SMS OR "Short Message Service" OR "text messaging" OR media OR television OR e-
mail OR internet OR website OR video OR teleconferencing OR "Instant Messenger" OR "Social
Networking Site" OR SNS OR blog OR Instagram OR Facebook OR twitter OR myspace OR
Flickr OR Sina-Weibo OR "online forum" OR GIS OR "Geographic Information System" OR "Geo-
Information system" OR "geomatics technology" OR GPS OR "Global Positioning System" OR "re-
mote sensing" OR radar OR "satellite sensor" OR "Airborne lidar" OR "emergency communication"
OR "information management system" OR "decision support system" OR "knowledge management sys-
tem" OR telemedicine OR "ad-hoc network" OR "wireless sensor network" OR "body area network"
OR "image processing technology" OR "Internet of things" OR IoT OR UAS OR UAV OR "Un-
manned aircraft" OR "Unmanned Aerial" OR "search and rescue robot" )
AND TITLE-ABS-KEY ("Disaster management" OR "emergency management" OR "disaster response" OR
"emergency response" OR rescue OR relief OR "disaster aid" OR "disaster assistance")

Table 2: Search terms used in the databases of MEDLINE and EMBAS

Operator Search fields and search terms

TITLE-ABS-KEY (disaster OR flood OR cyclone OR drought OR hurricane OR tornado OR typhoon
OR wildfire OR earthquake OR tsunami OR volcano OR landslide OR avalanche OR rainstorm OR epi-
demic)
AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (telemedicine)
AND TITLE-ABS-KEY ("Disaster management" OR "emergency management" OR "disaster response" OR
"emergency response" OR rescue OR relief OR "disaster aid" OR "disaster assistance")

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria Data Extraction

All obtained articles were selected based on The data we extracted from eligible articles in-
inclusion and exclusion criteria; articles that fully cluded article title, publication year, journal title,
meet the following inclusion criteria were includ- number of citations, corresponding authors as
ed: well as their countries and institutions, technolo-
 The research object of papers is natural gy type, disaster type, disaster occurrence time,
disasters. disaster area, landform of disaster area, time of
 Studies used ICTs in the disaster re- technology application, and the role and effec-
sponse phase. tiveness of technology in disaster relief.
 Articles analyzed the performance, func-
tion or influence of technology in rescue. Related Definition
Articles that meet any of the following conditions Effectiveness, if the use of ICTs in relief reduced
were excluded: casualties and economic losses, we judged that
 Review or serial (book series). the technology was effective.
 The technology has not been used for ac- Analysis Methods
tual rescue. Microsoft Excel 2016 software was used for de-
scriptive statistical analysis of extracted data;

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 Lu et al.: Real World Effectiveness of Information and Communication …

VOSviewer software (version 1.6.11) was used Quality Control

for keywords co-occurrence network visualiza- Two investigators independently completed the
tion and statistics of countries and institutions literature searches and screening, and disagree-
participating in the publication of included arti- ments were resolved by consensus as well as dis-
cles. VOSViewer developed by the Centre for cussion. We used software Endnote for docu-
Science and Technology Studies at Leiden Uni- ment management.
versity (The Netherlands), is a software tool spe-
cifically designed for constructing and visualizing Results
bibliometric maps. It is able to analyze the files
exported from Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, A total of 7,258 references were returned through
and RIS format. In addition, VOSviewer accepts searching the databases of Scopus, EI, MED-
network data as well as textual data. Moreover, LINE and EMBASE, of which 5987 were re-
VOSviewer provides three visualizations of a tained after removing the duplicate results using
map: the network visualization, the overlay visu- Endnote. Next, according to the inclusion and
alization, and the density visualization (26). In the exclusion criteria, 460 potentially qualified rec-
network visualization, the size of a node’s circle ords were identified by reading the titles and ab-
and label portray its importance. Larger circles stracts. Through further full-text assessment, 165
and labels represent more important nodes. Fur- articles were eligible. Moreover, another four
ther, the distance between two nodes in the map studies were included by reading references.
represents the strength of their relationship. The Therefore, 169 articles were finally included in
closer the distance is, the stronger the correlation the systematic review (list of articles, see S2 Ap-
is. Moreover, the color of the circles also depicts pendix). The flow chart for the search strategy
the cluster the node belongs to (27, 28). was shown in Fig. 1.

Search of Scopus Search of EI Search of MEDLINE Search of EMBASE

N=5527 N=1671 N=30 N=30

Remove duplicate records

N=1271

Initial screened
N=5987
Remove unqualified by reading the
titles and abstracts (N=5527)
 Not natural disasters
 ICTs not involved
 Not response phase
 Not actual rescue
 Review
 Serial

N=460

Remove unqualified by reading the

full texts (N=295)
 Not actual rescue (n=158)
 Not response phase (n=63)
Increase articles by  ICTs not involved (n=47)
reading references  Review (n=16)
N=4  Not natural disasters (n=10)
 Spanish (n=1)
Articles included in
systematic review
N=169

Fig. 1: Flow diagram for searching and selecting study

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 Iran J Public Health, Vol. 49, No.10, Oct 2020, pp.1813-1826

Number of Publications ICTs and actual disaster relief shows a general

One hundred and sixty-nine articles were includ- trend of growth since 1990. During 1990–2018,
ed in the systematic review through searching and the number of annual publications was relatively
screening based on specific search strategies and stable. Further, there has been a significant in-
eligibility criteria. Of which 168 (99.4%) were crease since 2006, with two publishing peaks in
published between 1990 and 2018. As can be 2011 and 2016.
seen from Fig. 2, the number of papers studying

Fig. 2: Number of publications on the application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in disas-
ter relief from 1990 to 2018

Journal Analysis China (20, 11.83%) and the United Kingdom (13,
One hundred and sixty-nine articles included in 7.69%). In addition, the United States was still
the systematic review were published in one hun- ranked first in terms of citation number (2106,
dred and seventeen journals. Table 3 lists the re- 54.84%), followed by Canada (607, 15.81%) and
lated information of the ten active journals, in- China (258, 6.72%).
cluding the number of publications, citations and
2017 IF (Impact Factor). International Journal of Institution Analysis
Remote Sensing (IF = 1.782, 2017) published the A total of 282 different organizations participated
most studies with eight publications. Photo- in the publication of the 169 articles on ICTs and
grammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing (IF natural disaster response for the period 1990–
= 3.15, 2017) and Natural Hazards (IF = 1.901, 2019. Table 5 shows the top nine active organiza-
2017) published seven articles respectively. In tions in the field of ICTs and actual disaster re-
addition, PLoS ONE (IF= 2.766, 2017) is the lief. Out of the nine organizations, five were
most frequently cited journal with 1084 (28.23%) based in the United States. According to the
citations, an average of three hundred and sixty- number of articles, Chinese Academy of Sciences
one citations per document. (5, 2.96%) was the most active institution fol-
lowed by University of Colorado (4, 2.37%), and
Country Analysis the other seven institutions (3, 1.78%). Moreover,
The 169 articles included were contributed by the University of Colorado ranked first in terms
fifty countries. There were ten countries publish- of the number of citations (189, 4.92%), followed
ing five or more papers (Table 4), and the United by the University of South Florida (146, 3.80%)
States had the first place when ranking for the and the Centers for Disease Control and Preven-
number of publications (74, 43.79%), followed by tion (CDC) (129, 3.36%).

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 Lu et al.: Real World Effectiveness of Information and Communication …

Table 3: Top 10 journals with most published articles on information and communication technologies (ICTs) and
actual rescue during 1990–2019
Rank Journal title No. of publications (%) No. of 2017
citations (%) IF
1 International Journal of Remote Sensing 8 (4.73) 241 (6.28) 1.782
2 Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote 7 (4.14) 188 (4.90) 3.15
Sensing
2 Natural Hazards 7 (4.14) 123 (3.20) 1.901
3 Journal of Field Robotics 6 (3.55) 215 (5.60) 3.46
4 International Journal of Emergency Manage- 5 (2.96) 12 (0.31) None
ment

5 PLoS ONE 3 (1.78) 1084 (28.23) 2.766

5 Disasters 3 (1.78) 122 (3.18) 1.596
5 Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency 3 (1.78) 14 (0.36) 0.712
Management
5 GEO: connexion 3 (1.78) 0 (0) None
5 Journal of Emergency Management 3 (1.78) 12 (0.31) None

Table 4: The top ten countries with the most papers on ICTs and actual rescue between 1990 and 2019

Rank Country No. of publications No. of citations

(%) a (%) a
1 United States 74 (43.79) 2106 (54.84)
2 China 20 (11.83) 258 (6.72)
3 United Kingdom 13 (7.69) 174 (4.53)
4 Germany 9 (5.33) 69 (1.80)
4 Italy 9 (5.33) 143 (3.72)
4 Australia 9 (5.33) 61 (1.59)
5 Canada 7 (4.14) 607 (15.81)
5 India 7 (4.14) 45 (1.17)
6 France 6 (3.55) 52 (1.35)
7 Japan 5 (2.96) 15 0.39)
a The total percentage of all countries is greater than 1, as cooperation existing between countries

Keywords Analysis into three decades, namely 1990–1999, 2000–

Keywords co-occurrence network helps to dis- 2009 and 2010–2019. Figure 3 (B), (C) and (D)
cover research hotspots and directions (29). Fig. show the high frequency keywords in the three
3 (A) indicates the keywords co-occurrence net- time periods respectively. As shown in Fig. 3 (B),
work of the articles on ICTs and actual rescue in the 1990s, the hot keywords in the field of
during 1990–2019. The top ten keywords with ICTs and natural disaster response included GIS,
the highest frequency in the articles included in remote sensing, aerial photography, and telemed-
the past thirty years were disaster management, icine. At the beginning of the 21st century, popu-
disasters, social media, earthquakes, remote sens- lar technologies applied to disaster response in-
ing, humans, floods, GIS, disaster response and clude remote sensing, GIS, image processing,
Internet. In order to further explore the research synthetic aperture radar, Internet and robotics
trend in this field, the thirty years were divided (Fig. 3 C). Afterwards, in the past ten years, social

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 Iran J Public Health, Vol. 49, No.10, Oct 2020, pp.1813-1826

media (such as Twitter) and social networking mote sensing and GIS have still appeared at a
(online) have become new research hotspots in relatively high frequency in the papers of the past
this field. However, traditional ICTs such as re- decade (Fig. 3 D).

Table 5: The top nine institutions with the most papers on ICTs and actual rescue between 1990 and 2019

Rank Institution Country No. of publi- No. of citations

cations (%) a (%) a
1 Chinese Academy of Sciences China 5 (2.96) 69 (1.80)
2 University of Colorado United 4 (2.37) 189 (4.92)
States
3 Georgia Institution of Technology United 3 (1.78) 21 (0.55)
States
3 National Aeronautics and Space United 3 (1.78) 124 (3.23)
Administration (NASA) States
3 University of South Florida United 3 (1.78) 146 (3.80)
States
3 Centers for Disease Control and United 3 (1.78) 129 (3.36)
Prevention (CDC) States
3 India Institution of Technology India 3 (1.78) 28 (0.73)
3 University of Cambridge United 3 (1.78) 21 (0.55)
Kingdom
3 University of Southampton United 3 (1.78) 23 (0.60)
Kingdom
a The total percentage of all institutions is greater than 1, as cooperation existing between institutions

Fig. 3: The keywords co-occurrence network of publications on ICTs and actual rescue. (A) Shows the keywords
with high frequency of occurrence in the papers published between 1990 and 2019. (B), (C) and (D) respectively
show the keyword co-occurrence networks in the three time periods of 1990–1999, 2000–2009 and 2010–2019

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 Lu et al.: Real World Effectiveness of Information and Communication …

Types of Natural Disasters Top seven Natural Disaster Events Most

A total nine kinds of natural disasters were stud- Studied
ied by the 169 studies included in the systematic Of the 169 articles included, the most frequently
review, including earthquake, extreme weather, studied natural disaster event was the 2010 Haiti
flood, wildfire, tsunami, landslide, biological epi- earthquake (19,11.24%). The number of articles
demics, avalanche and volcanic activity (Fig. 4). on 2005 Hurricane Katrina and 2008 Sichuan
Earthquake was the most studied natural disaster earthquake was 13 (7.69%) and 10 (5.92%) re-
(58, 34.32%), followed by extreme weather (48, spectively, ranking second and third. Table 6 lists
28.40%) and flood (37, 21.89%). the top seven natural disaster events.

Fig. 4: The nine kinds of natural disasters researched by the 169 articles. In this study extreme weather includes hur-
ricane, tornado, typhoon, storm, cyclone, blizzard and rainstorm. Landslide includes landslide and mudslide. Then
biological epidemics include H1N1, H7N9, Ebola, Zika virus and SARS outbreak

Table 6: Analysis of the characteristics of disasters

Categories No. of publications

(%)
Top seven disaster events
2010 Haiti earthquake 19 (11.24)
2005 Hurricane Katrina 13 (7.69)
2008 Sichuan earthquake 10 (5.92)
2013 Typhoon Haiyan 8 (4.73)
2004 Indian Ocean tsunami 8 (4.73)
2012 Hurricane Sandy 6 (3.55)
April 2015 Nepal earthquake 5 (2.96)
Landform of disaster areas a
Plain 87 (51.48)
Mountain area/ hills 72 (42.60)
Complex terrain 21 (12.43)
Basin 5 (2.96)
Plateau 2 (1.18)
a The total percentage is greater than 1, as some papers studied more than one disaster events

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 Iran J Public Health, Vol. 49, No.10, Oct 2020, pp.1813-1826

Landform of Disaster Areas other twenty-one articles reported that the rescue
Table 6 also shows the landform of the disaster took place on the compound terrain.
areas researched by the 169 papers included, in-
cluding plain, mountain area/ hills, basin and Types of ICTs
plateau. Among them, plain and mountain area A total of twenty-four kinds of ICTs were ap-
were the most involved, accounting for 51.48 % plied in the 169 studies (Fig. 5). Judging from the
(n=87) and 41.60 % (n=72) respectively. Basin number of articles, remote sensing is the most
and plateau were less involved, accounting for studied technology (55, 32.54%), followed by so-
2.96 % (n=5) and 1.18 % (n=2) respectively. An- cial media (52, 30.77%) and GIS (13, 7.69%).

Fig. 5: The twenty-four kinds of ICTs involved in the publications on ICTs and natural disaster response during
1990–2019. VGI in the figure is an abbreviation of volunteered geographic information

Time of ICTs Application nate disaster-related information during the disas-

Of the 169 studies, only 72 (42.60%) reported the ter response phase. Sixty-two (36.69%) papers
time of ICTs application in disaster relief. There reported that remote sensing and other technolo-
were fifty-two papers reported that ICTs were gies can collect images of disaster areas for disas-
applied within 72 hours after the disaster. More ter assessment.
detailed information on ICTs application time is
shown in Table 7. Effectiveness of ICTs in Rescue
Table 7 also lists the distribution of technical ef-
Role of ICTs in Rescue fectiveness in 169 articles. Only five of these arti-
Table 7 displays the role of ICTs in actual disas- cles made it clear that ICTs was effective for res-
ter relief according to the articles included, main- cue, that is, it can reduce casualties or economic
ly including information dissemination, image losses (30-34). Two other articles concluded that
collection, damage assessment, coordination of the rescue robot was ineffective in the mudslide
rescue work, donations collection, and geo- rescue because of its poor water resistance (35,
information display and analysis. Eighty-two 36). Furthermore, the majority failed to evaluate
(48.52%) articles reported that ICTs can dissemi- the effect of ICTs on the rescue.

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 Lu et al.: Real World Effectiveness of Information and Communication …

Table 7: Analysis of the characteristics of ICTs

Categories No. of publications

(%)
Time of ICTs application in rescue
≤6h 14 (8.28)
≤24h 16 (9.47)
≤48h 13 (7.69)
≤72h 9 (5.33)
>72h 20 (11.83)
Unclear 97 (57.40)
Role of ICTs in rescue a
Dissemination of disaster-related information 82 (48.52)
Image collection of disaster areas 62 (36.69)
Damage assessment 40 (23.67)
Coordination of rescue work 19 (11.24)
Donations collection 19 (11.24)
Geo-information display and analysis 17 (10.06)
Emotional support 9 (5.33)
Volunteer mobilization 6 (3.55)
Looking for missing 6 (3.55)
Data management 5 (2.96)
Location of affected areas 4 (2.37)
Location the victims 4 (2.37)
Provision of telemedicine 3 (1.78)
Effectiveness
Effective 5 (2.96)
Ineffective 2 (1.18)
Unclear 162(95.86)
a The total percentage is greater than 1, as some articles studied the multiple roles of ICTs

Discussion nologies are not yet applicable to all rescue sce-

narios, and most articles did not evaluate the ef-
We conducted a review of the articles on the ef- fect of ICTs on the rescue.
fectiveness of ICTs in natural disaster relief in the The keywords co-occurrence network indicates
databases of Scopus, EI, MEDLINE and EM- that since 1990, remote sensing technology and
BASE from Jan 1, 1990, to Mar 22, 2019. A total GIS have played a significant role in disaster re-
of 169 studies that met the inclusion and exclu- lief (Fig. 3). Remote sensing technology is often
sion criteria were included. Through this review, employed in conjunction with image processing
we can find ICTs are more and more widely used technology or/and GIS technology. When a dis-
in natural disaster relief, and it plays a vital role in aster occurs, remote sensing technology (mainly
information dissemination, providing disaster satellite remote sensing) is used to acquire images
information, assessing disaster damage, coordi- of disaster areas, the image processing technology
nating rescue and financing. ICTs have the po- is used to process the images, and the damaged
tential to reduce casualties and economic losses images of disaster areas can be displayed on a
in the disaster response phase, while some tech- three-dimensional map through GIS technology

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 Iran J Public Health, Vol. 49, No.10, Oct 2020, pp.1813-1826

(37, 38). Satellite remote sensing has the charac- times, accounting for 79.23% of all disasters in
teristics of large space coverage and high cost- that period (3). They caused 1.43 million deaths
effectiveness (39), but at the same time it may be and 2.66 trillion economic losses, accounting for
limited by weather and its own operation cycle 86.24% and 90.14% of the total respectively.
(40). In this case, it is often necessary to employ Therefore, the disaster management of earth-
aerial remote sensing, ground detection, and sat- quake, extreme weather and flood should be paid
ellite remote sensing to collect all-round infor- great attention by decision makers, practitioners
mation in disaster areas (41). The information and researchers.
can help assess the extent and distribution of Only 52 articles (34.32%) reported that ICTs
damages in disaster areas, plan rescue routes, and were used within 72 h after the disaster (Table 7).
distribute rescue materials (42, 43). As we all know, for disaster victims, they will
As can also be seen from the keywords co- have a great chance of survival, if they are res-
occurrence network (Fig. 3 D), social media in cued within the first 24 to 72 h (39). Therefore,
disaster relief is the hot research topic in recent rapid rescue after disasters is the first factor to
years. As a new communication technology, so- reduce casualties. However, there is another
cial media has become an essential channel for problem that the application time of technology
information dissemination during disaster relief may not be consistent with the time to support
(44). In disaster response, social media users col- decision-making. For example, remote sensing
lect data as sensors and then spread information technology can acquire images of disaster areas in
through social media. In addition, social media a short time after disasters, but the time for sub-
such as Facebook and Twitter, have played an sequent image processing may be long, so near
essential role in raising awareness, coordinating real-time image processing technology is neces-
relief effort and collecting donations (44, 45). sary (39).
However, with the use of social media in disaster What is worth our attention is that only five arti-
response, its defects have gradually attracted the cles (2.96%) reported that ICTs can reduce casu-
attention of researchers. There are two significant alties or economic losses in the disaster response
challenges: there is no guarantee of the quality of phase. The former had less economic losses by
information coming from social media and how comparing the people who used social media and
to protect the privacy of social media users. Due those who did not during flood (30). Radar and
to the characteristics of social media itself, the radio can locate victims of Avalanches, shorting
data from social media is much and complicated, rescue time and reducing mortality (31-33). Tel-
among which there is false information. Thus, emedicine reduced the casualties of hurricane
information filtering should be carried out before victims (34). However, two articles (1.18%) con-
disaster assessment and decision-making based cluded that the rescue robot was ineffective in
on this information to ensure the quality of in- the mudslide rescue because of its poor water
formation (45, 46). Also, the privacy of social resistance (35, 36). Moreover, most studies
media users should be paid attention to. Some (n=162, 95.86%) failed to pay attention to
studies show that social networking websites are whether the technology has improved the relief
at risk of revealing users' information, and social outcome. In other words, the effectiveness of
media research often ignores this problem (46, ICTs in disaster relief has not been systematically
47). evaluated so far. The occurrence of disasters is
Another significant result is that earthquakes, ex- unpredictable, so in the disaster response phase,
treme weather and floods are the major natural responders including decision makers, rescue or-
disasters studied (n=143, 84.62%) (Fig. 4). These ganizations and victims will face greater challeng-
three kinds of disasters occur frequently and do es than other disaster phases (48, 49). At present,
serious harm. From 1990 to 2018, earthquakes, most disaster relief operations, including the use
extreme weather and floods were reported 7,468 of ICTs, are based on experience (50). However,

1823 Available at: http://ijph.tums.ac.ir

 Lu et al.: Real World Effectiveness of Information and Communication …

the increase of disaster frequency and hazards sification, double publication and/or submission,
and the scarcity of resources require more effec- redundancy, etc.) have been completely observed
tive and efficient rescue operations (51). Perfor- by the authors.
mance evaluation can promote such improve-
ment by evaluating the efficiency, effectiveness, Acknowledgements
responsiveness and flexibility of response
measures (50). Therefore, the construction and The National Natural Science Foundation of
implementation of ICTs performance evaluation China (Grant No. 71874115) and Science
framework during the rescue is the future re- &Technology Department of Sichuan Province,
search direction in this field. In addition, if there China (Grant No. 2018KZ0046) financially sup-
is a reporting guideline on ICTs application in ported this study. The authors are beholden to
disaster relief, it will be very helpful to evaluate the Foundations for their support of this work.
the effectiveness of ICTs in the scenario of disas-
ter rescue. Conflict of interest
Strengths and Limitations
The authors declare that there is no conflict of
As far as we know, this study is the first system-
interest.
atic review of ICTs application in natural disaster
relief. However, limitations could not be avoided.
First, the method of systematic review may not References
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