Emerging Technologies In Emergency Situations

The world is witnessing an unprecedented upheaval in global operations and supply chains (Azadegan & Dooley, 2021; Scholten et al., 2020). Increasingly occurring natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic have plunged organisations into a state of emergency, with many fighting for their very survival (Ivanov, 2020; Queiroz et al., 2020; Schleper et al., 2021). Be they large or small, short-lived or sustaining for some time, emergency situations present a potential risk to an individual’s health and livelihood, organisational and societal welfare, and to the wider environment (van de Walle & Turoff, 2008; Sarkis, 2021). Emergency situations typically require urgent action to restore operations to the previous scenario or new strategies for survivability and adaptation to an entirely new context (Ivanov & Dolgui, 2020b; O’Flynn, 2020). Due to the scale and immediacy of these events, a range of actors is often involved, including governments, non-governmental organisations, and businesses, that need to work together to mitigate threats to life and property. To find a way out of today’s emergency situations, managers urgently require guidance on how to rapidly redeploy operational resources and build resilience (Ivanov & Dolgui, 2021; Remko, 2020). Emerging technologies such as those related to industry 4.0 are well-positioned to help organisations rebuild and reconfigure their resilience capabilities (Koh et al., 2019; Spieske & Birkel, 2021).