How to stay Connected: Citizens' Needs on Digital Self-Organization in Neighborhoods during a Crisis

Digital self-organization and collaboration in crisis are hindered not only by the absence of preparedness of citizens but also because of infrastructure disruptions. While citizens want to operate digitally, as they do outside a crisis event, they are often forced to fall back to analog actions. We conducted a survey with affected citizens (N=404) after the 2021 European floods, in which widespread infrastructure blackouts happened. With this survey, we conduct a contextual analysis of digital needs and actions. We investigate how far these were subject to infrastructure outages, how citizens were prepared, and to what degree they participated in informal neighborhood networks. Results show a massive disruption in all infrastructures, which led many citizens to fall back to analog actions. To cope with this, we suggest enhancing digital resilience by rethinking connectivity and understanding preparedness in a digital manner with the proposal of five requirements for digital self-organization in crisis to consider: (1) Digital collaboration should be preferred over analog workarounds; (2) support resilient communication technologies, including (3) being offline in the design; (4) crisis apps should be convenient and use internet-based communication when available; and (5) think of preparedness of citizens by integrating digital tools and actions.