Developing a Strategic Roadmap for Policy and Decision Making: Case Study of ICT and Disaster Risk Reduction in Public Safety Networks

Globally, disaster risk management (DRM) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) are recognized as key areas of concern and planning and are embedded in multiple United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The scope is broad and varied. To communicate and coordinate the efforts to realize the goals and policies, a strategic roadmap can be an effective method. However, roadmaps tend to include only general and broad goals, guidelines, and priorities. This can lead to confusion for the policy implementers and practitioners. To avoid this, the roadmap can include multiple layers that translate the policy roadmap elements to specific practical elements to implement policy. This is accomplished by combining roadmapping with the house of quality (HoQ) method. HoQ uses a planning matrix to bridge the relationships. HoQ is used in complex production environments such as automotive but is novel to DRR. One important aspect of DRR is information and communications technologies (ICT) and includes public safety and emergency networks such as FirstNet and SafeNet. ICT for DRR may be defined as the ICT services, applications, infrastructure, systems, and technologies for disaster prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery and may include regional and international communications networks. This research provides an initial roadmap framework of ICT for DRR.