Managing Risk Across Borders - ethical implications of engaging information technology for transboundary disaster collaboration.

Disaster management is increasingly becoming a project in managing diversity, from cross-organisational collaboration to inclusivity of voices. This is particularly prevalent when dealing with transboundary risks. New information technologies support these transboundary interactions by compiling diverse information and sources to build collaborative insight beyond what any individual organisation can know. This paper explores the ethical concerns that planners and responders face as they work with these collaborative information technologies to engage with data from other organisations, based in different data frameworks, socio-political priorities, goals, and cultures of risk. It draws on the ethical impact assessment of a cross-border collaborative crisis planning platform currently under development in the H2020 project IN-PREP to examine ethical tensions around equity, inclusion, diversity, solidarity, accountability and transparency. It discusses the consequences of such design foci for an agency’s ability to notice ethical risks that emerge from working in diversity.