Sustainable advanced learning in managing and communicating disaster risk by social media and crowd sourcing.
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
Kees Boersma
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Netherlands
f.k.boersma@vu.nl
Author(s):
Nathan Clark1 and Chiara Fonio2
1Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, N.Clark@Vu.Nl, NLD
2Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, C.Fonio@Vu.Nl, NLD
The ability to learn from crisis and disasters is a vital part of resilient societies. Yet, learning rarely takes place in a sustainable manner, and more often than not, local stakeholders are ignored in taking up the lessons learned after a disaster. In this paper, we propose a Sustainable Advanced Learning approach, defined as the maintainable and evolving collection of knowledge produced for and by all relevant stakeholders. We build on the notion of resilience, a normative and positive quality of a system, institution or individual that increases the capacity to manage disaster risk to understand sustainable advanced learning. We are interested in learning processes within and across institutions and organizations in particular on uses of social media and crowdsourcing in disasters. Sustainable Advanced Learning entails a cognitive dimension (the capability to gain in-depth knowledge of e.g. crises and crisis management) and a social dimension (the collaborative efforts to implement that knowledge into new practices), and a transformative dimensions whereby reflections are made on how knowledge was learned, what has changed in the process, and how and in what ways new knowledge might continue to evolve. Sustainable learning involves three interrelated levels of knowledge production: 1) the known is concerned with the perception and problematization of concrete issues; 2) the knowable is the contextualization and critical reflections on these issues, and how they may overlap and interface across different social, institutional and technical boundaries: 3) the unknown is concerned with experimentation, innovation and implementation of new knowledge, as well as the monitoring and review of the benefits and impacts of that knowledge (e.g. change). With this paper we would like to contribute to the discussion on learning from crisis and disasters, important for researchers, practitioners and policy makers. Researchers may be interested in learning and contributing to helpful and new approaches (methods) to studying the benefits and drawbacks of social media and crowd sourcing in disasters. It may provide practitioners to develop a more hands-on approach on how to best implement social media and crowdsourcing into their operating procedures, in different phases of disaster management cycle. Finally, policy makers may profit from sustainable advanced learning for improving their national and regional governance strategies on SMCS in disasters. This paper is an outcome of the EU H2020 project LINKS: strengthening links between technologies and society for European disaster resilience: http://links-project.eu/
Knowledge management and “unforeseen crises”