The Community – Based Flood Disaster Risk Reduction (CBDRR) in Beringin Watershed in Semarang City

Population growth in Semarang city is certainly increasing land demand for settlement. Limited land and weak regulation enforcement of land control trigger the land use change including the watershed area. Semarang City Spatial Plan 2011-2031 has determined Beringin as a buffer area with limited physical development allocation but the citizens utilized the watershed area for settlement. Settlement developments in the area reduce the watershed ability to catch water and river capacity due to increased sedimentation. These two reasons are the main cause of the flash flood disaster (regularly in rainy season) in seven villages of Beringin watershed. The condition is exacerbated by the tidal flood occurred in two village lies in coastal. In 2012, Semarang City government developed Flood Forecasting and Warning System as one of Climate Change Adaptation Measures known as Flood Early Warning System (FEWS). One of important output of FEWS is community-based disaster risk reduction. Community participation process in the FEWS has made it possible for the community to identify disaster risk characteristics, to propose solution for reducing flood risk which is suitable to the local wisdom, to increase the community capacity and to organize one of themselves in a disaster preparedness group which run quite independently

Crisis Communication Patterns in Social Media during Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy was one of the deadliest and costliest of hurricanes over the past few decades. Many states experienced significant power outage, however many people used social media to communicate while having limited or no access to traditional information sources. In this study, we explored the evolution of various communication patterns using machine learning techniques and determined user concerns that emerged over the course of Hurricane Sandy. The original data included ~52M tweets coming from ~13M users between October 14, 2012 and November 12, 2012. We run topic model on ~763K tweets from top 4,029 most frequent users who tweeted about Sandy at least 100 times. We identified 250 well-defined communication patterns based on perplexity. Conversations of most frequent and relevant users indicate the evolution of numerous storm-phase (warning, response, and recovery) specific topics. People were also concerned about storm location and time, media coverage, and activities of political leaders and celebrities. We also present each relevant keyword that contributed to one particular pattern of user concerns. Such keywords would be particularly meaningful in targeted information spreading and effective crisis communication in similar major disasters. Each of these words can also be helpful for efficient hash-tagging to reach target audience as needed via social media. The pattern recognition approach of this study can be used in identifying real time user needs in future crises

Improving the Effectiveness of the Dissemination Method in Disaster Early Warning Messages

The dissemination of disaster early warning messages has a significant role in the effectiveness and serviceability in an Early Warning System (EWS). Providing the community in a disaster area with an adequate dissemination and communication of early warning messages will improve people's awareness and reaction to a natural hazard. People who live in a disaster area play a crucial role in the success of EWS. Malaysian, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and Indonesian authorities employ mobile phone applications, such as text messages (SMS), as a tool for disaster warning messages. However, there are many challenges in methods for disseminating early warning messages. One of the challenges is the dissemination method in which only notification messages are sent. In this paper, we propose confirmation or verification messages, as part of disaster early warning messages, by using text messages. Confirmation messages are messages that use a verification channel to provide up-to- date official information about the latest natural disaster conditions. Keywords: disaster management, early warning messages dissemination, SM

SOCIAL NETWORK INFLUENCE ON RIDESHARING, DISASTER COMMUNICATIONS, AND COMMUNITY INTERACTIONS

The complex topology of real networks allows network agents to change their functional behavior. Conceptual and methodological developments in network analysis have furthered our understanding of the effects of interpersonal environment on normative social influence and social engagement. Social influence occurs when network agents change behavior being influenced by others in the social network and this takes place in a multitude of varying disciplines. The overarching goal of this thesis is to provide a holistic understanding and develop novel techniques to explore how individuals are socially influenced, both on-line and off-line, while making shared-trips, communicating risk during extreme weather, and interacting in respective communities. The notion of influence is captured by quantifying the network effects on such decision-making and characterizing how information is exchanged between network agents. The methodologies and findings presented in this thesis will benefit different stakeholders and practitioners to determine and implement targeted policies for various user groups in regular, special, and extreme events based on their social network characteristics, properties, activities, and interactions

Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio

E-Flow: A communication system for user notification in dynamic evacuation scenarios

Most of the current evacuation plans are based on static signaling, fixed monitoring infrastructure, and limited user notification and feedback mechanisms. These facts lead to lower situation awareness, in the case event of an emergency, such as blocked emergency exits, while delaying the reaction time of individuals. In this context, we introduce the E-Flow communication system, which improves the user awareness by integrating personal, mobile and fixed devices with the existing monitoring infrastructure. Our system broadens the notification and monitoring alternatives, in real time, among, safety staff, end-users and evacuation related devices, such as sensors and actuators

The Impact of Traffic Incident Locations on a Metropolitan Evacuation

Modeling emergency evacuations can help engineers, planners, and emergency managers identify the approximate time it would take for evacuees to leave a disaster area. Unfortunately, many evacuation studies do not account for traffic incidents. This study examined the effect of traffic incidents during a no notice emergency evacuation in the eastern St. Louis metropolitan area road network. The roadway network was modeled using traffic micro-simulation software VISSIM, which utilized the expected traffic volumes that were determined by the regional planning agency, and guided by input from the transportation engineers at the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). Because traffic speeds are expected to be low during such a high-volume event, this study considered only minor incidents. Incident locations were selected based on historical data. The results suggest that minor traffic incidents occurring upstream of key bottlenecks created no significant change in delay or evacuation duration. On the contrary, minor traffic incidents downstream of bottlenecks can significantly increase delay; albeit not enough to delay the duration of the entire evacuation by more than 15 minutes. Thus, during no notice emergency evacuations, traffic managers could prioritize available traffic incident management resources accordingly