‘Invented-on-the-fly’ mobile application for disaster response: Construction of technological frames and impact

Natural disasters create unprecedented challenges that demand immediate, innovative solutions. The study explores how emergency technologies are developed and adopted during disaster response efforts.

When Cyclone Gaja struck Tamil Nadu in November 2018, it caused massive damage to electrical infrastructure, leaving over 2.3 million households without power. The restoration team faced unique challenges: field engineers from different states were unfamiliar with local geography, rural areas had scattered populations living away from main roads, and traditional coordination methods through phone calls and manual map coloring proved inadequate for the scale of the crisis.

Within nine days of the cyclone, the response team developed a GPS-enabled mobile application (GE App) using a modular approach. This ‘invented-on-the-fly’ technology integrated electrical and revenue databases, allowing field engineers to update restoration progress in real-time while enabling monitoring officers to track work visually on maps and prioritize restoration efforts.

The research reveals fascinating insights on how people interpret and adopt emergency technologies. Initially, different groups viewed the same technology differently: monitoring officers saw it as a coordination tool, while field engineers perceived it as a monitoring device to supervise their work. This led to resistance and reluctant adoption.

However, as the crisis evolved, both groups discovered hidden features of the technology that helped solve emerging problems. Field engineers found they could use the app to identify water supply connections and locate nearby distribution transformers efficiently. Monitoring officers discovered they could prioritize restoration based on population density and create visual planning maps.

These discoveries of ‘abstract features’ during active use transformed everyone’s understanding of the technology. What began as a basic data collection tool evolved into an advanced prioritization and planning system. The technology became more valuable as users explored its capabilities while responding to constantly changing emergency situations.

This study offers crucial insights for disaster management and technology implementation. It demonstrates that successful emergency technologies often emerge from urgent need rather than extensive planning. More importantly, it shows that user acceptance and effective utilization depend not just on initial design, but on how people discover and adapt technology features during actual use.

The research suggests that policymakers and technology implementers should focus on creating adaptable systems that allow users to discover new applications during implementation, rather than trying to anticipate all possible uses in advance.