Project 5: Material Convergence

• Dr. Geoffrey Chua
• Dr. Fang Liu
• Mr. Jesus Lemuel Martin

Immediately after disaster strikes, many people with good intentions help in different ways. These can be in the form of in-kind donations, participating in search and rescue, and freelancing as nurses or physicians. In the research literature, this kind of actions is termed as convergence, which is defined as “the informal, spontaneous movement of people, messages, and supplies toward the disaster area” and includes material convergence, personal convergence, and informational convergence (Fritz and Mathewson, 1957).

To some extent, convergence is beneficial for disaster response, especially in the very early stage, due to shortage of immediate resources of personnel and supplies. But, it should be noted that material convergence has its risks, especially if it is not effectively coordinated with professional response actions. Some emergency practitioners and researchers even deem it as the “second disaster”.

This project tries to investigate convergence behavior after natural disaster situations. We will collect data on convergence behavior from past disasters and conduct empirical studies to investigate its causes, characteristics, benefits, and risks under different disaster scenarios. Then, we will explore how to design innovative mechanisms or policies to reduce the extent of convergence. We will try to incorporate our insights regarding material convergence into disaster response planning. We will first investigate an ideal centralized situation where a central planner takes care of emergency supplies and personnel management as a benchmark. Likewise, we will also investigate a realistic decentralized situation where multiple agents simultaneously exist for disaster response.