Crowdsourcing in Response to Disaster: A Literature Review

Frequent disasters are challenging emergency organizations and government authorities. However, the crowd – individuals and local communities – can contribute to various emergency response activities when disaster strikes. Enabled by technological advancements, the crowd’s involvement is facilitated by social media, allowing information to be quickly passed from areas affected by a disaster towards meeting the urgent needs of those affected. In this digital age, crowdsourcing represents an opportunity to support the flow of information, materials, funds, and manpower in response to a disaster. However, the crowd power that can be tapped into when responding to disasters is poorly understood in the research literature. This paper provides a scoping review of crowdsourcing stakeholders and crowdsourcing tasks in response to disaster to address this gap. Suggestions are made for future research on crowdsourced stakeholder coordination and crowdsourcing-supported supply chains during a disaster