Developing a User-Centric Understanding of Post-Disaster Building Damage Information Needs

After a disaster, an understanding of the scale and spatial distribution of building, infrastructure, and utility damage is critical to coordinate response, recovery, and reconstruction across the affected region. The damage information needs of organizations engaged in response/recovery/reconstruction vary in time, level of spatial precision required, and format, according to their particular mandates and roles. While individual decision-makers may have well-defined information needs, those needs may not be well understood within the broader disaster-oriented community. In this study, we report the preliminary results of a two-part survey of post-disaster building damage information needs in developing countries, comprising in-depth interviews with experienced practitioners and a short online questionnaire. We identify six post-disaster decisions that rely on building damage information and characterize them by their timing and qualities of the information needed that render it actionable. Improving our understanding of decision-makers' building damage information needs will enable (1) data providers to better support the organizations in the field (2) organizations in the field to more effectively share data and (3) researchers to pose more strategic questions, informed by the needs of multiple data users.