From community resilience to equity-centred technology solutions: Participatory insights from first responders and stakeholders

The lack of a universally accepted definition of “community resilience” calls for participatory and multi-stakeholder-based approaches for defining the resilience attributes that are pertinent to the community of interest. This paper presents a participatory, community-resilience–based approach for identifying technology and operational needs that reflect the perspectives of first responders and related stakeholders. Building on a structured methodology developed within the EU-funded Search and Rescue (S&R) project, which integrates literature review, 24 case studies, focus group consultations, and a multi-thematic gap survey administered to 28 organisations—spanning first responders, technology developers, and other expert groups, we provide herein a more detailed analysis of the structure of the gap survey and the feedback obtained. Findings highlight convergent priorities across respondent groups, including the need for equitable access to training; the safety and well-being of first responders and victims; improved interoperability across actors; and enhanced data integration for shared situational awareness. By explicitly linking community resilience attributes to user needs, the approach enables a shift from generic risk indicators toward context-sensitive and equity-informed design requirements. These insights guided the development and evaluation of multiple S&R technological solutions, including wearable health-monitoring systems, mixed-reality training tools, and shared information platforms supporting cooperative risk assessment.