Bridging Troubled Water: Evacuations and the Sharing Economy

Since Hurricane Katrina, there has been an increasing focus on disaster relief efforts in the United States. In this paper, the authors examine the progression of transportation management under emergency conditions and opportunities for addressing disasters by leveraging the sharing economy. The sharing economy mobilizes the unused capacity and resources of individuals through mobile and Internet platforms. Notable examples include mobility and the housing sectors. The authors argue here that there is an opportunity to improve disaster preparedness, response, and recovery by leveraging public-private partnerships and the sharing economy. To support this research, the authors interviewed 24 experts from public agencies, the private sector, and universities across the United States. The experts agreed that major problems still exist in emergency transportation management. The interviews focused on the future direction of emergency transportation management, including tapping into the infrastructure of flexible and adaptive resources through sharing economy businesses, such as Airbnb and Lyft and Uber. This paper contributes to the literature in three key ways. First, the authors categorize the progression of policies and effective practices in transportation emergency management into useful eras, the latest of which they call the “Virtual Era.” Second, the authors summarize the recent actions and responses of sharing economy companies to disasters. Finally, the authors provide policy and research recommendations that could help public agencies leverage recent technological and economic advances in the sharing economy for a variety of disaster use cases.