Towards a socio-technical framework for bridging the digital divide in rural emergency preparedness and response: Integrating user adoption, heterogeneous wide-area networks, and advanced data science

In rural areas, emergency preparedness and response (ERP) could be greatly affected by the lack of access to technology and the Internet and, therefore, to timely and accurate information about a natural or human-made disaster. This paper proposes a socio-technical framework that integrates a potential technology solution, with optimization methods, and strategies for user adoption. We argue that in order to bridge the digital divide in rural ERP, all these factors need to be systematically considered and integrated into a comprehensive framework, which could guide potential implementation.