This paper examines the role of location-based services within the framework of integrated natural disaster risk management, with a particular focus on their application in the telecommunication and geospatial guidance and tracking of fire-rescue units, specialized civil protection units, and the civilian population in crisis situations. Integrated natural disaster risk management is intrinsically linked to the availability of geospatial information, which suggests that such information should be regarded and utilized as a decision-support resource — both within integrated risk management systems and at the individual level, in the context of directional guidance and self-evacuation. The fundamental premise advanced in this paper is that technical and technological infrastructures — specifically, platforms supporting location-based services that are publicly available and widely adopted — can serve as a source of relevant orientation and navigation information, playing a significant role in integrated natural disaster risk management by providing users with access to pre-standardized geospatial data, such as geospatial zones affected by natural disasters, evacuation routes, and checkpoints, in appropriate formats. The objective of this paper is to provide a scientific description of the possibilities for the active integration of LBS, primarily for professional purposes through current platforms, as well as through alternative commercial solutions, and to explore the potential for incorporating the civilian population into the integrated natural disaster risk management system by utilizing location-based services as a tool for crowdsourcing and the dissemination of personalized alerts. To this end, the methodological approach is based on content analysis of existing literature on location-based services and natural disaster risk management, as well as on the conceptual synthesis of geospatial and information models. The results indicate that such integration of location-based systems can contribute to enhanced collective and individual situational awareness, improve the monitoring and communication processes of professional personnel within the integrated risk management system, as well as of the civilian population in geospatial areas subject to risk — thereby creating conditions for more effective and efficient resource allocation in order to maximize operational outcomes.
Marko Iljevski (Tue,) studied this question.