Crisis Mapping in Switzerland: A Stakeholder Analysis

Crowdsourced crisis maps emerged in the last decade as a series of civil society projects - often launched by small groups or even individual media users with the intention to collect and organize geo-referenced information from a large number of sources during crisis in order to make it useful for emergency managers as well as those people affected by the crisis. The purpose of this study is not only to examine crisis mapping, but more importantly to place this phenomenon within a Swiss context. What would a potential crisis map look like in a Swiss context? Which actors would be involved and what role could governmental actors play? To date, despite their reported usefulness for mitigating the effects of disaster and speeding up recovery processes, little is known about how the phenomenon of crisis mapping could be brought in line with established procedures of disaster management. To examine how crisis mapping in Switzerland could be organized, we suggest a three-step approach. First, we review several recent instances of crisis to identify key stakeholders that tend to play a decisive role in such processes. Based on our recent work on agency and behavior in self-organized crisis collaborations, we develop a typology of stakeholders in crisis mapping situations. In a second step, we attempt to transfer the phenomenon of crisis mapping to the Swiss context. To this end, based on a real crisis situation experienced recently in Switzerland, we describe a scenario in which a crisis mapping project might emerge. In particular, based on several background interviews with experts from Swiss authorities, technology companies, academia and civil society, we examine which social actors in Switzerland would likely be involved in such a crisis mapping project and how the collaboration among these actors could take place. Finally, based on the findings of the scenario exercises, we discuss possible future directions for crisis mapping in Switzerland.