Organizational and Societal Impacts of Big Data in Crisis Management

This paper presents findings from a case study conducted as part of the EU project, BYTE – ‘The Big data roadmap and cross‐disciplinarY community for addressing socieTal Externalities’. The article seeks to outline the role of big data in the different stages of crisis management and the organizational and societal benefits associated with engagement with this data. This article supports findings from other studies in that big data is able to significantly contribute to crisis response efforts. Big data can support organizations in their efforts to be better informed as data are able to significantly contribute to situational awareness, which can in turn inform decision‐making, such as resource allocation. In addition, this study has demonstrated that big data is also able to positively inform preparation and precrisis efforts. However, at present, little is known about the contribution of big data to recovery efforts; demonstrating the need for further research in this area. As such, big data does appear to provide a number of positive benefits to organizations, benefits of which can then subsequently positively impact society.