Emergency and Disaster Management, Preparedness, and Planning (EDMPP) and the ‘Social’: A Scoping Review

Abstract

The importance of emergency and disaster management, preparedness, and planning (EDMPP) is ever increasing with COVID-19 being one recent EDMPP challenge. EDMPP is impacted by and impacts the ‘social’ of individuals and societies. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the ‘social’ is important for providing EDMPP. Marginalized populations are over-proportionally impacted by emergencies and disasters and often overlooked in EDMPP. Therefore, it is especially important to understand the lived experience of marginalized groups and to involve marginalized groups in providing knowledge for EDMPP. Technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning and reasoning, e-coaching, other decision support systems and Bayesian belief networks are increasingly employed for EDMPP. However, biases and other problems in the use of technologies for EDMPP are noted. Understanding the ‘social’ of marginalized populations and others is essential for designing algorithms and other technologies that are not biased towards marginalized populations and others. The phrase “equity, diversity, and inclusion” (EDI), other EDI linked phrases, and EDI frameworks are increasingly employed in workplaces to improve research, education, and workplace environments for marginalized groups such as women, Indigenous Peoples, visible minorities, racialized minorities, disabled people, people with disabilities and LGBTQ2S+. EDMPP actors are workers. Using EDI in EDMPP could improve the EDMPP situation of marginalized groups by encouraging knowledge production by and about marginalized groups related to EDMPP. The main objective of this study was to map out the engagement with the ‘social’, EDI and marginalized groups in the EDMPP-focused academic literature in general and the EDMPP academic literature covering disabled people, patients, technologies and COVID-19. A scoping review using the academic databases SCOPUS, Web of Science, and the databases accessible under Compendex and EBSCO-HOST were employed to fulfill the objectives. The study found little coverage of marginalized populations and EDI phrases and frameworks, and a lack of many terms linked to the ‘social’ in the literature searched. These gaps need to be filled given the importance of EDMPP to the ‘social’ of individuals and societies.