Dispatch is the practice of assigning people, vehicles, or supplies to destinations and tasks in response to changing information about need and capacity [@occupysandyorientation2012; @ambinder2013].
Within emergent disaster response, the term matters because horizontal response still has to decide who goes where, with what, and when. Occupy Sandy’s field orientation tied teams to point people, hotlines, and report-back expectations, while the wider network relied on live information routing to redirect people and materials under changing conditions [@occupysandyorientation2012; @ambinder2013].
Dispatch is therefore a coordination practice, not a command monopoly. It connects distributed initiative to a shared picture of current need.
Related terms
- Point Person - a role that often links field teams to dispatch
- Distributed Sensemaking - the wider process that makes dispatch decisions possible
- Transport and Evacuation Networks in Emergent Disaster Response - a text on the spatial side of dispatch work