Mapping community diversity and e-participation in emergency management: evidence from WebEOC in the city of San Francisco

Abstract

While scholars and practitioners in the field of emergency management have investigated the nature of civic engagement, few have examined the impact of community diversity on civic participation. Meanwhile, WebEOC, 'Emergency Operation Center based on online environment', is a good tool to increase response capacity of emergency management through citizen participation. By using the WebEOC log history and American Community Survey data in the city of San Francisco, spatial autocorrelation and cluster analysis via geographic information system (GIS) are used to analyse how community diversity affects civic participation in emergency management. The spatial analysis results show that the high level of e-participation in urban emergency management appears in highly dense block groups, such as central business districts and secondary commercial areas. In terms of the effects of community diversity, the results confirm that community diversity in income, occupancy, and tenure are spatially correlated in the block groups.