Information Technology's Impact on Humanitarian Relief Organizations

Disasters such as earthquake, flooding, hurricanes and starvation are becoming more common over the years. When these disasters affect an area or country, humanitarian organizations are often the first people to arrive, time is crucial and lives are saved depending on how fast response organizations can mobilize. Humanitarian accomplishment is related to the amount of information that’s being gathered. Today, information technology plays a role in almost every organization, humanitarian organization is no exception. How information is gathered and handled is related to how it´s being coordinated. So how is Information Technology being used within humanitarian organization and how is coordination effected together with Information Technology? To answer these two questions a case study was conducted based on three interviews with three different Swedish organizations involved in humanitarian relief and response. The study shows that coordination now days are done with email and video meetings internally within humanitarian organizations and between different humanitarian organizations. Coordination is able to be performed faster and the area of reach is not limited by verbal communication. Information Technology has not only made the job for humanitarian organization easier and more convenient over the years, the main contribution this study show is that the amount of donors has rapidly increased based on the fact that information travels faster and is more available now days through media and other accessible forum. More money in the humanitarian organizations indirectly means more life’s can be saved.Validerat; 20111019 (anonymous