Identifying the Multiplex Network of Collaborative Decision-Making in Municipal Disaster Preparation and Response

Actors in the real world are affected by multiple relations, and therefore, so are actions in the web of collaboration. As such, it is crucial to take account of these multiple, intertwined relations when evaluating any network constituted by various types of cooperative and collaborative activity: For example, the collaborative decision-making carried out in municipal disaster preparedness and management. Occupying the front line of disaster management, municipal governments rely on multiple actors and a variety of resources in their efforts to respond swiftly and effectively; and how well such an organization assembles these various aspects of its collaborations will determine how robust its organizational resilience is. However, collaborative relations are often embedded in cross-layer interactions, which makes them hard to perceive, and may lead to blind spots in emergency-planning education and training. By applying social network analysis—specifically, a multiplex network approach—this paper aims to identify and verify the characteristics embedded in the multiplex network that delineate collaborative decision-making in a municipal disaster-management setting. Its results show that decision-making collaboration among New Taipei’s municipal agencies tasked with disaster preparedness and reduction constitutes a complex multiplex network, containing cross-layer effects derived from trust, resources, and decision-making interactions. The study concludes that a clear understanding of municipal decision-making in the context of disaster preparation and response needs to take account of the multiple dimensions of agency collaboration and the interdependencies that emerge from those dimensions.