The Design of an Online Social Network Site for Emergency Management: A One Stop Shop.

Web 2.0 is rapidly creating new opportunities for communication and collaboration. Part of this explosion is the increase in popularity and use of Social Network Sites (SNSs) for general and domain-specific use. In the emergency domain there are a number of websites including wikis and SNSs. but they stand as silos in the field, unable to allow for cross-site collaboration. In this paper we describe ongoing design science research to develop and refine guiding principles for the design of an SNS that will bring together emergency domain professionals in a “one-stop-shop.” We surveyed emergency professionals who study crisis information systems, to ascertain potential functionalities of such an SNS. Preliminary results suggest that there is a need for the envisioned SNS. Future research will continue to explore possible solutions to issues addressed in this paper.