Disaster resilience through big data: Way to environmental sustainability

Disaster management is a growing concern and priority throughout the world and "resilience" is increasingly viewed as a key capacity related to disaster and post-disaster management and development. Recent research highlights how resilience is enhanced through the use of "big data" technologies that improve the speed and effectiveness of linkages between disaster information and systemic response. Summarizing and discussing this research, this study highlights and substantiates the potential of big data strategies to help mitigate the risks and impact of socio-ecological vulnerability. Based on a qualitative desk review and analyses of secondary data, resilience is framed as a function of the adaptive, absorptive and transformative capacity of socio-political systems to withstand and cope with the adverse effects of disaster. In addition, this study emphasizes the major principles and components of effective big data use; e.g., open source tools, strong infrastructure, local skill development, context-specific data sources, ethical data sharing and experiential learning. This study reveals some important big data technologies that can be easily used in the different phases of disaster management and enhancing resilience such as remote sensing imagery, social media data, crowdsourced data, geographic information system (GIS), and mobile metadata. The findings hold major relevancy for policymakers, administrators, and related stakeholders responsible for taking action before, during and after disasters through training, early warning systems, emergency evacuation, relief distribution and other key infrastructural components.