With natural hazard and climate-related  disasters on the rise, online tools such as  crowdsourced mapping  and  social media  can help people understand and respond to a crisis. They enable people to share their location and contribute information.

But are these tools useful for everyone, or are some people marginalised? It is vital these tools include information provided from all sections of a community at risk.

Current evidence suggests that is not always the case.

Online tools let people help in disasters

Social media played an important role in coordinating response to the  2019 Queensland floods  and the  2013 Tasmania bushfires. Community members used Facebook to coordinate sharing of resources such as food and water.

Crowdsourced mapping helped in response to the humanitarian crisis after the  2010 Haiti earthquake. Some of the most useful information came from public contributions.

Twitter provided similar critical insights during  Hurricane Irma  in South Florida in 2017.

Research  shows these public contributions can help in  disaster risk reduction, but they also have limitations.

In the rush to develop new disaster mitigation tools, it is important to consider whether they will help or harm the people most vulnerable in a disaster.

Who is vulnerable?

Extreme natural events, such as earthquakes and bushfires, are not  considered  disasters until vulnerable people are exposed to the hazard.

To determine people’s level of vulnerability we need to know:

  1. the level of individual and community exposure to a physical threat
  2. their access to resources that affect their capacity to cope when threats materialise.

Some groups in society will be  more vulnerable to disaster  than others. This includes people with immobility issues, caring roles, or limited access to resources such as money, information or support networks.

When disaster strikes,  the pressure  on some groups is often magnified.

The devastating scenes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 revealed  the vulnerability of children  in such disasters.

Unfortunately, emergency management can exacerbate the vulnerability of marginalised groups. For example, a  US study last year  showed that in the years after disasters, wealth increased for white people and declined for people of colour. The authors suggest this is linked to inequitable distribution of emergency and redevelopment aid.

Policies and practice have until recently mainly been written by, and for, the  most predominant groups  in  our society, especially heterosexual  white men.

Research shows how this can create  gender inequities  or exclude the needs of  LGBTIQ communities,  former refugees and migrants  or  domestic violence victims.

We need to ask: do new forms of disaster response help everyone in a community, or do they reproduce existing power imbalances?

Unequal access to digital technologies

Research  has assessed the “techno-optimism” – a belief that technologies will solve our problems – associated with people using online tools to share information for disaster management.

These technologies inherently discriminate if access to them discriminates.

In Australia, the  digital divide  remains largely unchanged in recent years. In  2016-17  nearly 1.3 million households had no internet connection.

Lower digital inclusion is seen in already vulnerable groups, including the unemployed, migrants and  the elderly.

Global  internet penetration rates  show uneven access between economically poorer parts of the world, such as Africa and Asia, and wealthier Western regions.

Representations of communities are  skewed  on the internet. Particular groups participate with varying degrees on social media and in crowdsourcing activities. For example,  some ethnic minorities  have poorer internet access than other groups even in the same country.

For crowdsourced mapping on platforms such as  OpenStreetMap, studies find  participation biases relating to gender. Men map  far more  than women at local and global scales.

Research  shows participation biases in community mapping activities towards older, more affluent men.

Protect the vulnerable

Persecuted minorities, including  LGBTIQ communities  and  religious minorities, are often more vulnerable in disasters. Digital technologies, which  expose  people’s identities and fail to protect  privacy, might increase that vulnerability.

Unequal participation means those who can participate may become  further empowered, with more access to information and resources. As a result, gaps between privileged and marginalised people grow wider.

For example, local Kreyòl-speaking Haitians from poorer neighbourhoods contributed information via SMS for use on crowdsourced maps during the  2010 Haiti earthquake response.

But the information was translated and mapped in English for Western humanitarians. As they didn’t speak English, vulnerable Haitians were further marginalised by being unable to directly use and benefit from maps resulting from their own contributions.

Participation patterns in mapping  do not reflect the true makeup of our  diverse societies. But they do reflect where power lies – usually with  dominant groups.

Any  power imbalances  that come from unequal online participation are pertinent to disaster risk reduction. They can amplify community tensions, social divides and marginalisation, and exacerbate vulnerability and risk.

With greater access to the benefits of online tools, and improved representation of diverse and marginalised people, we can better understand societies and reduce disaster impacts.

We must remain acutely aware of digital divides and participation biases. We must continually consider how these technologies can better include, value and elevate marginalised groups.

Written by Billy Tusker Haworth, Christine Eriksen and Scott McKinnon. Republished with permission of The Conversation.