Research Commentary on IS/IT Role in Emergency and Pandemic Management: Current and Future Research

IS/IT plays an important role in our everyday life, especially in today's Internet era. This article discusses the roles of IS/IT in providing services and support on information gathering, analysis, and management during major public emergencies and pandemic crises such as the battle against the new coronavirus. The five selected papers in this special issue introduce advanced methods on data collection and social media user analysis to deal with the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper also presents future research directions on the use of IS/IT in emergency and pandemic management such as IS control and governance, intelligent health care, enhancing people's lives and mental health, and knowledge management.