• Knowledge Management – The Thing from Another World? Malte Schönefeld, Jana-Andrea Frommer, Patricia M Schütte, Yannic Schultze
• Sustainable advanced learning in managing and communicating disaster risk by social media and crowd sourcing, Kees Boersma, Nathan Clark, Chiara Fonio

Panel description

The panel links with the overall topic of NEEDS2021 by aiming to significantly contribute to the discussion on knowledge management as a tool for prediction, prevention, preparedness and management of "unforeseen" crises.

Phenomena with global and great social impact, like the increased refugee movement to Central Europe between late summer 2015 and spring 2016 or the Covid-19 pandemic since early 2020 seem to come unexpected and have a long-lasting appearance. Emergency managers and related professionals, but also civil society are engaged in coping with the circumstances while long-term strategic decisions need to be made at the same time. Decisions made in an early phase of a crisis can set the ground for further path dependencies. Relevant stakeholders instantly operate at full capacity and form ad-hoc networks to tackle overwhelming situations in cooperative approaches. These required ad-hoc networks and other improvised interim solutions to answer eruptive crises often do not anticipate the lengthiness of operations. A common lapse, for example, is the omission of a timely implementation of a knowledge management system.

The panel welcomes contributions from a variety of perspectives, e.g.

• The role of organizational learning: Which influence does organizational learning from crises like the so-called “refugee crisis” or COVID-19 have on organizational structures and processes? Which “good practices” and “lessons learned” can be integrated into organizational modes of operation for the future?
• Knowledge management: What makes it so difficult to manage knowledge for and in crises? To which extent and in which forms does implicit and explicit knowledge find its way into an accessible resource for future crises? How does a crisis knowledge management become accepted, sustainable and flexible? Which obstacles interfere with the implementation and utilization of crisis knowledge management and how can they be overcome?
• Crisis management: How does crisis management and knowledge management fit together before, during and after  mastery of urgent crisis? To what extent is a combination of the two approaches at all useful, unnecessary or even (non-)practicable? How do the two management approaches influence each other (potentials and barriers)?
• Inter-organizational perspective: How can knowledge management be transformed into an inter-organizational project in order to overcome isolated solutions? Which benefits or conditions could motivate organizations to participate on knowledge sharing?

Potential panelists are encouraged to apply with empirical, theoretical, and methodological research relevant for a better understanding of crisis knowledge management. Crisis management practitioners are equally welcome to introduce their perspective on the implementation and utilization of crisis knowledge management.