Social Network Analysis of Korean Disaster-Safety Industry

Abstract

Natural disasters and social disasters have been causing more human losses and economic damages over the years. In the modern society, the government alone cannot fully manage disasters, because the number and size of disasters are increasing. Naturally, the role of the private sector in disaster management becomes more important, but there is a lack of studies about the disaster-safety industry. It is need to understand the market of disaster-safety industry to support and grow it. To analyze and understand the current state of the Korean disaster-safety industry, this study adopted the social network analysis technique. The social network analysis is an analysis method to describe the characteristics of the social network, and by using it, the complex industrial networks can be deeply understood. To collect data, semi-structured interviews were conducted on the K-SAFETY EXPO 2016. The interviews mainly focused on collecting customer information of companies in the disaster-safety industry. Through the interview, basic business information and clients list of 93 companies in the disaster-safety industry are collected. The companies were divided into 8 subdivisions by their related safety sectors, and clients are classified into 15 industry sections for the analysis. The trade networks between the companies of the disaster-safety industry and their clients are analyzed and interpreted with the eigenvector centrality. By the analysis, it is found that the industrial/construction safety, disaster prevention, and traffic safety are major subdivisions of the disaster-safety industry. 47% of the companies are engaged in multiple industries, and 39% of the companies are engaged only in the disaster-safety industry. Companies in the industrial/construction safety subdivision have the widest range of market in terms of industrial distribution of their clients, and the average client number is high in the industrial/construction safety and the disaster prevention subdivisions. Overall, the public institutes are the most important client type of the overall disaster-safety industry. The disaster prevention subdivision shows a trend that its market is highly relying on their clients by the public institutes. It is also considered that high-value-added service industries and high-tech industry in the disaster-safety industry can widen the possible markets. This study analyzed the current state of the Korean disaster-safety industry, and found that the current disaster-safety industry market tends to highly depend on the demand of public institutions, therefore, the government-centered policy for growth of the disaster-safety industry is needed. It is also found that there are few transactions between the disaster-safety industry and service industry, so it is needed to study the required role of the disaster-safety industry by the service industry.