New Digital Framework Aims to Connect Municipalities and Apartment Associations Before the Next Crisis

When a major emergency strikes a city, the difference between an orderly response and a chaotic one often comes down to something deceptively simple: knowing who lives where, who needs help, and how to reach them quickly. A new study from Tallinn University of Technology, published in Information Systems Frontiers, tackles this problem head-on by designing a conceptual e-service that would digitally connect local municipalities with apartment associations, the volunteer-run bodies that manage nearly all of Estonia’s privatized housing stock. The research, led by Jaanus Riibe with colleagues including Silvia Lips and Dirk Draheim, uses Tallinn’s Kristiine district as a living laboratory for rethinking how crisis communication can reach every resident, including the most vulnerable.

The urgency of the work is grounded in sobering data. A 2022 survey by the Tallinn Municipal Police Department found that apartment associations in the Estonian capital are largely unprepared for crises. Of 694 respondents, 80 percent had not mapped alternative solutions or backup systems for utility failures, more than 90 percent had not considered alternative heating options, and 76 percent had no plan for water or sewage outages. Yet 90.5 percent of buildings ensure systematic access to technical infrastructure rooms, and 80 percent maintain resident contact information for emergencies. With approximately 6,575 apartment associations registered in Tallinn and 96 percent of Estonian apartments privatized and managed through such associations, these organizations represent an enormous, largely untapped resource for community resilience.

The research team employed an exploratory, design-oriented case study informed by principles of Action Design Research, combining a World-Café-style participatory workshop with older residents, expert consultations with crisis managers, and analysis of secondary data. The workshop, held in January 2023 at the Kristiine Activity Center, gathered 30 anonymous written responses from older adults, 90 percent of whom were over 70 years old and 60 percent of whom lived alone. The findings revealed striking gaps in crisis awareness: 63 percent did not know the locations of public shelters, 43 percent did not know which phone number to call in danger, and only 41 percent reported access to a shelter. Ten percent of participants did not even live at the address listed in the national Population Register, underscoring the data-quality problems that plague emergency planning.

Communication preferences proved equally revealing. When asked how they would want to receive crisis information, 70 percent chose radio, 67 percent television, 67 percent SMS, and 60 percent phone calls, while only 40 percent selected official websites. More than half did not use the internet daily, and 41 percent had no email account. Trust patterns were equally instructive: Tallinn City was the most trusted information source at 66 percent, followed by state institutions at 41 percent, while social media ranked last at 21 percent. These results point decisively toward a hybrid, multi-channel communication strategy rather than a purely digital portal, with apartment associations acting as trusted local intermediaries between municipal authorities and residents.

Expert consultations with the Tallinn Municipal Police Department reinforced the institutional side of the problem. Crisis managers emphasized that during emergencies the state delegates numerous tasks to municipalities, yet they lack reliable, up-to-date databases on apartment associations, their contact persons, building resources, and preparedness levels. Existing registers, including the e-Business Register, often contain outdated information. Experts also highlighted the difficulty of identifying residents who need extra help during evacuations, since population registers lack accurate residence data and details on vulnerable groups, a problem compounded by frequent apartment rentals and limited contact between landlords and housing associations.

The centerpiece of the study is the Coordination Framework for Municipal-Apartment Association Crisis Preparedness, or C-MAACP Framework, a conceptual e-service that integrates six core elements: municipal coordination, apartment-association participation, register-supported information management, privacy-aware access, preparedness-status visualization, and multi-channel communication. Built on Estonia’s X-Road data exchange layer, the platform would aggregate data from national registers including the Social Services and Benefits Data Register, the e-Population Register, the e-Business Register, and the e-Land Register. Apartment associations would upload building-specific information, crisis plans, resource descriptions, and resident contact lists, while municipalities would assign each building a color-coded preparedness rating: green for self-sufficient, yellow for needing development, and red for high-risk buildings requiring external support.

Privacy emerges as a central design constraint rather than an afterthought. The framework employs a two-tier, role-based access model aligned with GDPR principles of purpose limitation and data minimization. Apartment associations would see only task-relevant, aggregated preparedness information, while identifiable or vulnerability-related data would remain restricted to authorized municipal or rescue-service roles with a clear legal basis. The researchers note that even aggregated indicators can become re-identifiable in small apartment buildings, requiring threshold rules, suppression of small-cell outputs, and audit trails. A full legal analysis and Data Protection Impact Assessment would be mandatory before any deployment.

A formative evaluation with experts from the Estonian Rescue Services Agency and the Tallinn Municipal Police Department confirmed that no comparable e-service exists today and that the concept addresses a genuine operational need. Experts suggested the tool could save significant work time for the Rescue Board, whose shelter assessments currently rely on home visits, and recommended involving the Estonian Union of Co-operative Housing Associations in future prototype testing. However, they also flagged unresolved challenges: data protection questions, development costs, the difficulty of motivating voluntary apartment associations to participate, and the technical complexity of interfacing with multiple state databases. Critically, they asked how the system would function during long-term power or internet outages, a scenario the framework must address through resilient fallback procedures.

The study’s broader significance extends beyond Estonia. The researchers argue that municipal crisis preparedness is fundamentally a socio-technical coordination problem, not merely a database integration exercise. Their design principles, connecting public-sector data infrastructures, local community intermediaries, trusted multi-channel communication, and privacy-aware governance, are transferable to any municipality that must coordinate digital systems with grassroots organizations and vulnerable residents. In less digitally mature contexts, the same logic could apply with more manual data updating and stronger reliance on community networks. The authors are careful to position the framework as a concept rather than a tested system: prototype development, legal analysis, and empirical evaluation with apartment associations, municipal users, and rescue services remain essential next steps before any claims about operational effectiveness can be made.

As Europe’s population ages, with the number of people aged 60 or above projected to reach 1.4 billion globally by 2030, the challenge of reaching older residents during emergencies will only intensify. Estonia, with 99 percent of public services available online around the clock, offers an unusually favorable testing ground for solutions that bridge high-tech infrastructure and low-tech human realities. The C-MAACP Framework suggests that the future of crisis communication may depend less on building new apps and more on weaving together the registers, institutions, and neighborhood associations that already exist, ensuring that when the next crisis comes, no building and no resident is left invisible.

Subject of Research: Designing e-services to improve crisis communication and preparedness cooperation between local municipalities and apartment associations

Article Title: Designing E-Services for Improving Crisis Communication in Local Municipalities: Cooperation with Apartment Associations

Article References: Riibe, J., Hassan, J. M., Sharma, R., Lips, S., & Draheim, D. (2026). Designing E-Services for Improving Crisis Communication in Local Municipalities: Cooperation with Apartment Associations. Information Systems Frontiers. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-026-10811-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10796-026-10811-6

Keywords: crisis management, e-services, apartment associations, municipal crisis preparedness, digital crisis communication, emergency evacuation, e-governance, X-Road, privacy-by-design, older adults, Estonia, action design research