LAUSR

Abstract In the Caribbean region, there is a significant yearly number of natural events incidents. The impact of those events has affected the well-being, social and economic structures of the countries in this region. The investment in disaster management strategies is a fundamental decision to the region for improving capabilities, understanding the liabilities, dealing with the disaster stages, and integrating systems and tools to obtain greater results in resilience strategies. Therefore, information technology and robotics have played an effective role bringing innovation to the traditional approaches by improving the capabilities of personnel and serving as a catalyst to rapid data collection tools for effective decision-making during disastrous situation, as has been the case of the Dominican Republic. The organic adoption process of Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) has represented a large step forward regarding this matter. Examples of the adoption process occur based on their flexibility in their regulatory context, funding investments in testing the applications of UAS, such as surveying, delivering medical samples and spray disinfection during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are only some mature applications that address a future-proofing concept as well as the integration into a typical institutional workflow. Therefore, this paper aims to be an introductory guide for decision and policymakers, educators and technicians to reduce the scepticism, lack of knowledge and know-how in the adoption of reliable, practical and effective tools by providing a combination of theories from socio-technical systems (socio-technical change impact model (SCI)) and organisational level (technology-organisational-environmental) frameworks of the UAS adoption process for natural events, tasks and critical roles in disaster management taking into account the Dominican Republic context. Qualitative case of study was evaluated from 7 organisations involved to disaster management in the Dominican Republic, and a semi-structured interview were used to approach the adoption process of Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) in these organisations. The findings of these studies reveal the lessons learned from the internal strategies and policies in the adoption process between public and private institutions. The task of capturing images and videos has been shown to be a faster way to acquire data, which allow infrastructure projects to tend to be a significant benefit at the moment of applying UAS for 3D reconstructions and simulations of seismic behaviour, and finally, identification of inaccessible vulnerable areas after disasters. Other tasks, such as search and rescue, are also mentioned. Recommendations for policymakers are related to establish guidance for learning organisations approaches on focusing on digitalisation of cities through UAS applications. Other context can be benefit from the lessons and can also beas an additional complement of the Regional Comprehensive Disaster Management Framework of 2014–2024.