Human’s life consists of various ordinary events (e.g., eating a favorable breakfast and taking a driving license exam) and extreme events (e.g., experiencing a major earthquake and encountering a wide infectious disease breakout). It has been well known that information and communication technologies (ICTs) can help ordinary people deal with ordinary daily events effectively and efficiently. However, it is less recognized for whether, what, how, and why ICTs can help people handle extreme events effectively and efficiently, while it is particularly important for human beings to develop a systematic scientific knowledge of using ICTs to handle various unexpected but devastating extreme events.
Hence, the proposed communication will present preliminary results from a systematic literature review focused on extreme events defined as: Any occurrence or sequence of occurrences that deviate in socio-physical parameters from a previously existing “normal” system state, demanding event-specific socio-physical system restoration and adaptation. These occurrences can represent either natural or human causes with effects across physical and spatial scales and levels of a social system (intra-individual, inter-individual, intra-group, inter-group, intra-organizational, inter-organizational). Based on this, we sought to answer the following questions: 1) Which are the new forms of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) data collection during extreme (natural and man-made) events?; 2) Which types of human activities mediated by the new ICTs use, can take place during extreme (natural and man-made) events and which adaptive functions do they serve?; 3) Which new insights can the new ICTs data give us concerning the study of human coping and resilience during extreme (natural and man-made) potentially stressful events? Preliminary answers to these questions will be provided, along with a discussion of its implications for risk communication and crisis communication.