Hands2Help – Ein App-basiertes Konzept zur Koordination Freiwilliger Helfer/ Hands2Help – An App-based Concept for Coordination of Disaster Response Volunteers

Abstract

The successful overcoming of the flood disaster in Central Germany in summer 2013 can be ascribed not only to several disaster response organizations (e. g. fire fighters, THW, etc.) but also to thousands of on-site disaster response volunteers. However, the decentralized self-coordination of these volunteers by means of social networks evolved as a major problem. It led to useless and even harmful actions and caused many volunteers to appear at overcrowded or closed places of action whereas other sites were in urgent need of additional helping hands. To make such coordination problems manageable in future and to exploit the full potential of disaster response volunteers, system requirements for IT-systems that support volunteer coordination are discussed in this paper. Based on this, a novel and app-based coordination system called Hands2Help is presented which might support incident commanders and control centers in volunteer coordination.