ICT support to the reconstruction of social meanings after a disaster

In this paper we briefly discuss how ICT and its applications may impact on the process of social reconstruction of meanings developed by communities affected by a disaster. In particular we refer to the L’Aquila case (hit by a major moment magnitude 6.3 earthquake on April 6, 2009), an extra-ordinary situation in which the sudden loss of the private sphere of people homes as well as of the ordinary work and public environments makes the availability of virtual spaces crucial for social interaction and for the re-definition of the lost identity (both at individual and at community level). The paper presents the main characteristics of the EagleVox platform, to show how the combination of mobile ICT technology, social web, and semantic technology is suitable for supporting the social recovery process.