Evaluating the impact of citizen collaboration with government agencies in disaster response operations: An agent-based simulation study

Abstract

In emergencies, the involvement of informal volunteers as first responders plays a crucial role in alerting professionals and carrying out initial rescue efforts due to their proximity to incidents. The lack of proper training among many of these informal volunteers, however, raises concerns about their potential to inadvertently cause harm. Within the disaster response community, there is a growing need to understand the collaboration dynamics between spontaneous volunteers and government officials in disaster response planning. This paper quantitatively evaluates the value of collaboration between formal government agencies and informal citizen volunteers in disaster response operations. It investigates the potential for informal volunteers' involvement to enhance the effectiveness of disaster response under different collaboration strategies. The study aims to identify best practices for coordinating officials and citizens, develop novel collaborative response models, and assess those models’ performance in emergencies. To achieve this goal, agent-based simulation is employed to model alternative collaboration strategies between the government and informal volunteers across various disaster scenarios. The simulation incorporates verified request locations from emergency phone calls and on-the-ground assessment data, as well as unverified request locations obtained from social media platforms. The objective of this study is to examine various collaboration strategies and assess their impact on the response rates of disaster victims, considering different citizen-related, responder-related, and logistics-related disaster factors. This research provides insights into the current state of emergency management activities and proposes improvements to enhance the effectiveness of disaster response efforts.