Cross-Boundary Information Sharing Flows in Emergency Management:

Given that information plays a decisive role in emergency management, scholars have been interested in how government agencies, first responders, and the general public could effectively acquire and disseminate emergency-related information. Existing research has made significant contributions in distinguishing various types of information-sharing flows (i.e., Citizen to Government, Government to Government, Government to citizen, and Citizen to Citizen). However, a holistic understanding of who the main actors are, why they share information, what specific content is shared, and what some of the main results are is lacking. This study contributes to fill this gap by proposing a framework that identifies and characterizes the critical components of information sharing in emergencies as well as some of their relationships. By analyzing the literature, we found that the characteristics of the actors, the phase of the emergency management life-cycle, and the communication channels are factors shaping information sharing activities, including willingness to share and the specific content being shared. In addition, information sharing could have a heterogeneous impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of emergency management practices, depending on the quality of the information being shared among multiple actors. The short-Term results could also affect the satisfaction of the involved stakeholders and further influence information sharing in the long run. Finally, a few questions that deserve further investigation are identified.