A Patent Application for NEXTGEN Flood Early Warning System

This design fiction re-imagines an important informational element of the flood early warning system in order to unpack some of the questionable assumptions that society makes about disaster. In presenting an updated, ironic, vision of an alternative system, we highlight some of the ways that received ideas about the root causes of disaster, who is responsible for public safety, and the role of private sector innovation, are so embedded in the design of technologies used in crisis management that they have become taken for granted. This work demonstrates the potential for design fiction to serve as a tool in the evaluation and critique of safety-critical information systems and as a communication tool for conveying the complex findings of disaster research. It also points to new avenues of exploration for crisis informatics work on public warning systems.