Lu Bingqing, Zhang Xingyi, Wen Jin
Chinese Evidence-Based Medicine Center, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China.
Department of Information Engineering, School of Telecommunications Engineering, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China.
Iran J Public Health. 2020 Oct;49(10):1813-1826. doi: 10.18502/ijph.v49i10.4678.
The application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in disaster relief is increasingly widespread, but it is still unclear whether ICT can reduce casualties and economic losses in disaster response phase.
We searched studies in the databases of Scopus, EI, MEDLINE and EMBASE from Jan 1, 1990, to Mar 22, 2019. Excel 2016 and VOSviewer (version 1.6.11) were used to analyze the extracted data and visualize the network diagram.
We included 169 eligible articles. The number of ICTs-related disaster-relief articles published annually shows an overall trend of growth since 1990. The United States has the greatest influence in this field. The 169 articles reported twenty-four technologies and the top three reported most frequently were remote sensing, social media, and geographic information system (GIS). The main roles of ICTs in natural disaster rescue included information dissemination, post-disaster image collection and damage assessment. However, of the 169 articles, only five reported that ICTs reduced casualties or economic losses in disaster response phase, two concluded that rescue robot was ineffective in mudslide rescue, and the remaining 162 (95.86%) did not evaluate the effect of ICTs on the rescue.
ICTs have the potential to reduce casualties and economic losses, but some technologies are not applicable to all rescue scenarios. In addition, most studies did not pay attention to the effect of technology on the rescue.
信息通信技术（ICTs）在救灾中的应用日益广泛，但在灾害应对阶段，ICTs是否能减少人员伤亡和经济损失仍不明确。
我们检索了Scopus、EI、MEDLINE和EMBASE数据库中1990年1月1日至2019年3月22日的研究。使用Excel 2016和VOSviewer（1.6.11版）分析提取的数据并可视化网络图。
我们纳入了169篇符合条件的文章。自1990年以来，每年发表的与ICTs相关的救灾文章数量总体呈增长趋势。美国在该领域影响力最大。这169篇文章报道了24种技术，报道频率最高的前三种技术是遥感、社交媒体和地理信息系统（GIS）。ICTs在自然灾害救援中的主要作用包括信息传播、灾后图像采集和损失评估。然而，在这169篇文章中，只有5篇报道ICTs在灾害应对阶段减少了人员伤亡或经济损失，2篇得出救援机器人在泥石流救援中无效的结论，其余162篇（95.86%）未评估ICTs对救援的效果。
ICTs有潜力减少人员伤亡和经济损失，但有些技术并不适用于所有救援场景。此外，大多数研究没有关注技术对救援的效果。
