The role of technology and informatics in disaster planning and response

It is clear that technology and informatics are becoming increasingly important in disasters and humanitarian response. Technology is a critical tool to recording, analyzing, and predicting trends in data that could not be achieved prior to its implementation. Informatics is the translation of this data into information, knowledge, and wisdom. Combining technology and informatics applications with response efforts has resulted in various enhanced biosurveillance efforts, advanced communications, and information management during disasters. Although these efforts have been well described in the literature, research on the impact of technology and informatics during these efforts has been limited. As a result, this chapter will provide an overview of these technology and informatics solutions and present suggestions for further research in an era when disaster and humanitarian response efforts continue to increase as well. A literature search was performed using PubMed search tools with the National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms of "disasters," "disaster planning," "disaster medicine," "technology," "informatics," and "research." Search limitations were set for 5 years and in English. Because of the limited number of research articles in this field, the MeSH term research was deleted.