Geographic information technologies, structuration theory, and the world trade center crisis

Abstract

Advocates of geographic information technologies (GIT) have long claimed significant advantages to bringing a spatially oriented perspective to bear on organizational and policy decision making, however, for a variety of reasons, these advantages have been more difficult to realize in practice than might be supposed. In this article, we argue that awareness and appreciation of the potential value of GIT changed dramatically as a result of the World Trade Center (WTC) attacks on September 11, 2001. We use a structurationist theoretical perspective to show that GITs were “enacted” in a variety of novel ways by social actors thrust together by the demands of the crisis to form interorganizational systems, and we illustrate this process through three extended examples of GIT adaptation and innovation during the crisis. One lasting consequence of this episode is that GITs have moved from serving as a relatively static reference tool to a dynamic decision-making tool for emergency situations. We conclude by suggesting that the crisis was a catalyst for change in the use of GIT and, reciprocally, in the social structures in which GIT will be deployed in the future.