Economic Evaluation of IT Investments for Emergency Management : A Cost-centric Control Model

In an emergency management case, evaluating the economic value of information technology investments is a challenging problem due to the effects of decision making, uncertainty of disasters, and difficulty of measurements. Risk assessment and recovery process, one of the major functions in emergency management, consists of (1) measurement of damages or losses, (2) recovery planning, (3) reporting and approving budgets, (4) auctioning off recovery projects to constructors, and (5) construction for the recovery. Specifically and of our interest, measurement of damages or losses is often a costly and time-consuming process because the wide range of field surveys should be performed by a limited pool of trained agents. Managers, therefore, have to balance accuracy of the field survey against the total time to complete the survey. Using information technologies to support field survey and reporting has great potential to reduce errors and lowers the cost of the process. However, existing cost benefit analysis framework may be problematic to evaluate and justify the IT investment because the cost benefit analysis often include the long-run benefit of IT that is difficult to quantify and overlook the impact of managerial control upon the investment outcomes. Therefore, we present an alternative cost-centric control model that conservatively quantifies all cost savings to replace benefits in cost benefit analysis and incorporate the managerial control. The model provides a framework to examine how managerial decision making and uncertainty of disaster affect the economic value of IT investments. The current project in Emergency Agency in South Korea is introduced as a case to apply the cost-centric control model. Our work helps managers to better evaluate and justify IT-related investment alternatives in emergency management.