Ephemeral and pop-up communities in disasters: Conceptualizing community temporality

The concept of 'community' is central to disaster risk reduction, yet it remains theoretically underdeveloped and inconsistently applied across disciplines and practice. This study addresses this gap by examining how individuals affected by the 2022 floods in Queensland, Australia conceptualized 'community' and enacted its roles during the disaster. Drawing on 52 in-depth interviews, the research identifies five distinct community types and explores their formation contexts, activation patterns, and contributions to preparedness, response, and recovery. While communities of place, interest, practice, and Virtual/Networked communities, are well-documented in the literature, this study introduces the concept of pop-up communities: ephemeral, situationally emergent collectives that mobilize rapidly in response to disasters. These communities challenge static, place- and interest-based models by highlighting the temporal and relational dynamics of social capital mobilization in response to temporally situated, community-identified needs. By integrating sociological and relational perspectives, the paper extends existing community theory and presents a refined typology and conceptual framework for understanding community dynamics in disaster contexts. The findings underscore the importance of recognizing pop-up community formations and their embedded resources to enhance resilience and inform more adaptive, inclusive, and community-centered disaster management strategies.