Budd, J., Miller, B. S., Manning, E. M., Lampos, V., & Zhuang, M. (2020). Digital technologies in the public-health response to COVID-19. Nature Medicine, 26(8), 1118–1192.
According to Budd et al. (2020), digital technologies are used to help public-medical responses to the Coronavirus globally include population surveillance, infection tracing, identifying new test cases, and intervention evaluation based on data mobility and public communications. Quick reactions strategies include mobile devices, cloud databases, data computation resources, and language processing. The application of technology in disaster management, such as Coronavirus, enables the transformation of life aspects (Maduz & Roth, 2017). According to a worldwide technology use survey, sixty-seven percent of the global populace use mobile devices, while sixty-five percent own or use smartphones in their daily lives. Populace surveillance systems depend on health-associated information from diagnosis notifications and laboratory data.
The surveillance network is oriented upon symptoms reports from identified healthcare infrastructure and hospitals. Online websites provide portals where users can fill in information by taking surveys and answering questionnaires. The collected data is used to devise strategies and determine health disaster trends before they take place hence developing coping mechanisms before a disaster attack (Maduz & Roth, 2017). Early case identification is vital in dealing with a pandemic such as Coronavirus to identify infected victims or waves of future attacks to reduce the outcomes’ repercussions. Digital technology provides stakeholders with the opportunity to offer community-based services such as group testing and self-testing to gather more accurate information used for projections. Technological innovation supports the application of automation to the existing system functions, which are not crucial or are mere routines to speed up the strategic preparedness process. Tracing digital contacts supports tracing of infection rate and speed for scaling the resources used in combating a pandemic or disaster. Digital tracing of contacts minimizes reliance on human capital or workforce when collecting information for developing a preparedness scheme through mobile applications (Maduz & Roth, 2017). The Coronavirus pandemic mobile apps supporting digital connections were used in various countries to rapidly gather data and other important information for limiting the disease spread.
Information collected through mobile phones using the global positioning system, mobile network, and wireless networks are used to monitor people’s movements, instant population data, marking of high transmission risk, and offer trends used to implement interventions such as quarantine. Budd et al. (2020) argue that effective implementation of interventions during disaster depend on public awareness and education. Therefore, corporations implement a communication approach that includes the active participation of community members. Technology gets onboard alongside other general well-being innovations used during preparation for a disaster (Shi et al., 2018). Advanced technology applied in the development of detection and sensory gadgets enables specialists to predict disasters such as a hurricane, infection outbreaks and support implementation of strategies such as early evacuation and first aid availability before the actual disaster occurs.
Technology innovation cannot effectively function with integrating other inter-disciplinary resources. Data sources during the preparedness stage for a pandemic outbreak are linked to medical records, employment information, and vulnerability score to help in in-depth analysis to generate correct results used for successful mitigations (Budd et al., 2020). Therefore, the use of digital technologies gradually reduces the complications associated with medical issues.
Panda, K. G., Das, S., & Sen, D. (2019). Design and deployment of UAV-aided post-Disaster emergency network. IEEE Access, 7.
A reliable and resilient communication system remains a crucial challenge to disaster mitigation stakeholders. For the past few years, many disasters have taken place worldwide, for example, tsunami, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Statistical analysis shows that immediately after a disaster occurs heavy supplies of emergency services and treatment are required. During this period, the number of lives lost is significant (Shi et al., 2018). This happens due to a lack of tracing system rescue preparedness, user search and save operation and innovative strategies to communicate. During the preparedness stage, the project head should ensure that technology is used to develop a privileged emergency network system for communication and completion of other activities that provide successful mitigation of the prevailing disaster (Panda et al., 2019). Typically, immediately after a disaster strikes, the existing communication system is paralyzed, and affected regions are secluded without any means for communication.
Digital technology provides emergency communication systems through devices, networks, and other necessary resources used for exchanging information. Therefore, technology offers an alternative harnessing resource that acts as emergency backup during initial stages of disaster occurrence to provide virtual rescue service, evaluating the level of attack and the regional variance in magnitude to help in severity-based rescue operations.
Panda et al. (2019) state that it can be achieved using internet infrastructure as a communication link and platform for acquiring software to be installed in mobile devices for easy linking and communication during disaster development of an emergency network. During such operations, artificial intelligence, technologically innovative gadgets such as camera drones, auto-piloted rescue deliveries, and computers can be used to speed up the rescue process (Alsamhi et al., 2017). Digital technology is used in surveillance to trace people who are unreachable when a disaster occurs and collects real-time information used to plan for the recovery process.
Conclusion
The two articles under review suggest that technology is vital to the process of prior preparation for disaster. Technology has such powers that people are incapable of possessing, for example, reaching places where the efforts to rescue victims can expose people to danger. Digital technology overcomes the communication barrier through the support of connectivity when the alternative option is not available.
References
Alsamhi, S. H., Ansari, M. S., & Rajput, N. S. (2017). Disaster coverage pedication for the emerging tethered balloon technology: Capability for preparedness, detection, mitigation, and response. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 12(2), 1–10. Web.
Panda, K. G., Das, S., & Sen, D. (2019). Design and deployment of UAV-aided post-Disaster emergency network. IEEE Access, 7.
Budd , J., Miller , B. S., Manning, E. M., Lampos, V., & Zhuang, M. (2020). Digital technologies in the public-health response to COVID-19. Nature Medicine, 26(8), 1118–1192.
Shi, P., Shaw, R., Ardalan, A., Ying, E., Chan, Y., Choudhury, J. R., … Han, Q. (2018). Fourteen actions and six proposals for science and technology-based disaster risk reduction in Asia. Science Policy Dialogue for Implementation of the Sendai Framework, 275–279. Web.
Maduz, L., & Roth, F. (2017). The urbanization of disaster management. ETH Zurich Research Collection, 204, 1–4.