Kashika Chawla, Tanishka Chavan, and Vivek Kant
Earthquakes are among the most destructive natural disasters, causing extensive destruction, loss of life, and socioeconomic disruptions. The unpredictability of such an event requires prompt decision-making under extreme conditions. The unethical decisions taken in these circumstances can have serious consequences, not only worsening the impact on affected communities but also causing additional stress and moral burden on those responsible for making these choices.
We aim to comprehend and design for the role of ethics in disaster management, particularly in earthquake response. We analyse the dimensions of decision-making, stakeholder actions, and psychological factors influencing ethical choices in the aftermath of earthquakes in the Indian context and use them to formulate our intention.
The earthquake preparedness research generally focuses on reducing risks, infrastructure safety, evacuation strategies, and emergency planning, while the ethical dimensions of crisis intervention remain underexplored. This study emphasised that the three phases of earthquake relief present their distinct set of moral challenges. During recovery, the focus shifts to undertaking responsibilities and long-term rebuilding efforts while addressing deeper inequalities that disasters can worsen. Another learning was that cognitive biases, such as making judgments based on past experiences, affect people’s decision-making during crises, leading to unintended ethical implications. Time constraint plays a vital role in how the decision itself gets shaped.
To understand the current state of earthquake response, the existing disaster management frameworks, studies and reports about ethics and decision-making were initially reviewed. Based on the background studies, stakeholder mapping, factors influencing ethical decisions, consequences of unethical decisions and related aspects were comprehended. Scenario-based analysis was done to examine how emotions and biases affect decisions taken by different stakeholders during a crisis. ZIP analysis was used to find key ethical points where decisions have the most impact. Based on this, a public awareness campaign was created to strengthen ethical awareness in earthquake response.
KEYWORDS: earthquake relief, ethics, disaster response, moral dilemma, psychological response, altruism, compassion fatigue, consequences of decisions, systemic design
