Developing a Ready2Help Application

Approaching citizens to help during emergencies can be useful for formal response organizations. Citizens can identify and resolve help requests in society. The Netherlands Red Cross currently has a platform called Ready2Help, which can activate these citizens, but does not yet have an application in which a match can be made between help requests and help offers. This thesis investigated how a (web-)application could contribute in identifying and resolving help requests in society. Research was conducted to determine which methods could be used to match and activate volunteers. Several lo-fi prototypes were developed and evaluated using an iterative approach. These results were used to determine the requirements and scenarios for the hi-fi prototype. A highly interactive hi-fi prototype was developed, which was be evaluated by a target-group of Ready2Helpers. The need of having such an application is verified in this thesis. The Netherlands Red Cross can act as a match maker between help requests and help offers in the Netherlands using this (web-)application. It can be observed that Ready2Helpers are likely to respond to help requests but are less likely to post help requests themselves. The thesis and prototype serve as an important guideline for further development of Ready2Help-like applications.