When Systems Fail: How Technology Can Make or Break Disaster Response | Dr. Raj Sharman

About this episode

In this episode of Business Talk, Dr. Raj Sharman, Professor of Management Science and Systems at the School of Management, University at Buffalo, and a recipient of National Science Foundation grants, takes us deep into the world of digital resilience and disaster response. Drawing from decades of research spanning extreme event management, health information technology, and information assurance, Dr. Sharman unpacks how the digital infrastructure ecosystem, from cloud platforms and social media to first responders and national agencies like FEMA, determines whether communities survive or collapse in the face of crisis. Through compelling case studies ranging from the 2015 Nepal earthquake, where OpenStreetMap volunteers remotely mapped rubble pathways within 48 hours, to COVID-19, where his team at Buffalo built applications to track the geographic spread of the virus and optimize vaccine distribution, Dr. Sharman reveals a fundamental paradox: the very interconnectedness that makes modern systems powerful also makes them catastrophically fragile. He explores how organizations can build true resilience, through power redundancy, diverse ISP routing, simulation tools like HAZUS and SLOSH, and decentralized decision-making, while warning that neither natural disasters nor cyberattacks wait for organizations to think tactically.

Closing with a forward-looking reflection on artificial intelligence, Dr. Sharman shares both his excitement for agentic AI's potential in emergency response and his caution around hallucination, misplaced trust, and workforce displacement, leaving us with one guiding vision: "I think of how the world should look 10 years from now, and then see if some of my research can make that world a reality."

This podcast is brought to you by Global Management Consultancy.

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