Engineering for Crisis Management: A User-Centred Analysis of Disaster Mobile Applications

TL;DR

This study analyzes 70 disaster mobile apps, focusing on features, user challenges, and improvement opportunities, emphasizing the need for lifecycle-oriented, inclusive, and reliable disaster communication tools.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of disaster apps, highlighting user-reported issues and offering design recommendations for enhanced effectiveness.

Findings

Most apps focus on response, limited on preparedness and recovery

User feedback cites reliability, usability, and accessibility issues

Recommendations include lifecycle design, multilingual support, and user feedback integration

Abstract

Disaster mobile apps play an increasingly important role in disseminating hazard information and supporting communities during emergency situations. This study presents a comprehensive analysis of these mobile applications, focusing on their features, user-reported challenges, and opportunities for improvement. We first examined the landscape of disaster mobile apps by analysing 70 apps identified through a combination of methods, including those from the literature, the Google Play Store, and the App Store. The analysis categorised apps based on disaster focus, geographic coverage, popularity, monetisation strategies, and features across the disaster lifecycle. We then extracted, translated and analysed user reviews using topic modelling and sentiment analysis to identify key concerns and recurring issues. The results show that most applications prioritise response-related functionalities, with limited support for preparedness and recovery. User feedback highlights critical challenges related to technical reliability, usability, accessibility, and information clarity. Based on these findings, we propose a set of recommendations for developers and emergency management agencies to improve the reliability, inclusiveness, and overall effectiveness of disaster mobile apps. These include adopting lifecycle-oriented design approaches, strengthening multilingual support, improving technical robustness, and integrating user feedback into development processes. This work contributes to the growing body of research on human-centred disaster risk reduction by providing empirical insights and actionable guidance for the design of more reliable and inclusive disaster communication systems.