A Derivation of Factors Influencing the Successful Integration of Corporate Volunteers into Public Flood Disaster Inquiry and Notification Systems

Flood hazards have become increasingly common and serious over the last few centuries. Volunteers can observe instant flood information in their local environment, which presents a great opportunity to gather flood information. The information provided by individual volunteers is too much for them to truly understand. Corporate volunteers can offer more accurate and truthful information due to their understanding of the roles and requirements of specific tasks. Past studies of factors influencing the success of corporate volunteers in flood disaster are limited. Thus, this research aims to derive the factors that enable corporate volunteers to successfully integrate the flood information to help reduce the number of injuries and deaths being caused by flood disasters. This research used the information success model and the public-private partnership (PPP) model to develop an analytic framework. The nature of flood disaster management problems is inherently complex, time-bound, and multifaceted. Therefore, we proposed a novel hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model to address the key influence factors and the cause-effect relationships between factors. An empirical study in Taiwanese public flood disaster inquiry and notification systems was used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. The research results can serve as guidelines for improving the government’s policies and the public sector in the context of corporate volunteer involvement in flood disaster inquiry and notification and in relation to other natural and manmade disasters.