Abstract
Technology can contribute greatly to disaster resilience, especially by enhancing the
interconnectedness between the authorities and the public and by facilitating the rapid exchange
of information. This special issue of Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on
Humans in ICT Environments is focused on technology and social media enablers of
community resilience. Crises take on a variety of shapes and forms—natural or health disasters,
terroristic and criminal acts, technology malfunctions, and large-scale accidents—at the local,
regional, national, and global levels. Crisis management plans, created and implemented at the
organizational level, typically involve public service and institutional authorities overseeing
emergency response. However, contemporary crises, because of scale, complexity, or
immediacy, are more likely to require collaboration with citizen responders to deal quickly with
evolving situations.