Knowledge Management for Tourism Crises and Disasters

This article focuses on the need for destinations to create a knowledge-based system to assist with crisis and disaster management. After laying out the unique needs of the tourism industry for knowledge when disaster strikes, the article describes a knowledge framework designed to assist in such situations. This framework suggests three separate knowledge bases to deal with the three stages of a disaster. Knowledge Base 1, the precrisis stage, deals with knowledge retrieval and storage; Knowledge Base 2, the stage during the crisis, deals with knowledge processing; and Knowledge Base 3, the postcrisis stage, deals with knowledge dissemination. The contents of each knowledge base are identified in detail and a recommendation for public sector leadership in implementation of such a system is discussed.