Web-Based Interactive Social Media Visual Analytics

Real-time social media platforms enable quick information broadcasting and response during disasters and emergencies. Analyzing the massive amount of generated data to understand the human behavior requires data collection and acquisition, parsing, filtering, augmentation, processing, and representation. Visual analytics approaches allow decision makers to observe trends and abnormalities, correlate them with other variables and gain invaluable insight into these situations. In this paper, we propose a set of visual analytic tools for analyzing and understanding real-time social media data in times of crisis and emergency situations. First, we model the degree of risk of individuals’ movement based on evacuation zones and post-event damaged areas. Identified movement patterns are extracted using clustering algorithms and represented in a visual and interactive manner. We use Twitter data posted in New York City during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 to demonstrate the efficacy of our approach. Second, we extend the Social Media Analytics and Reporting Toolkit (SMART) to supporting the spatial clustering analysis and temporal visualization. Our work would help first responders enhance awareness and understand human behavior in times of emergency, improving future events’ times of response and the ability to predict the human reaction. Our findings prove that today’s high-resolution geo-located social media platforms can enable new types of human behavior analysis and comprehension, helping decision makers take advantage of social media

Crisis Analytics: Big Data Driven Crisis Response

Disasters have long been a scourge for humanity. With the advances in technology (in terms of computing, communications, and the ability to process and analyze big data), our ability to respond to disasters is at an inflection point. There is great optimism that big data tools can be leveraged to process the large amounts of crisis-related data (in the form of user generated data in addition to the traditional humanitarian data) to provide an insight into the fast-changing situation and help drive an effective disaster response. This article introduces the history and the future of big crisis data analytics, along with a discussion on its promise, challenges, and pitfalls

How Mobile Devices are Transforming Disaster Relief and Public Safety

With its growing usage, mobile technology is greatly improving disaster relief and public safety efforts. Countries around the world face threats from natural disasters, climate change, civil unrest, terrorist attacks, and criminal activities, among others. Mobile devices, tablets, and smart phones enable emergency providers and the general public to manage these challenges and mitigate public safety concerns.In this paper, part of the Brookings Mobile Economy Project, we focus on how mobile technology provides an early warning system, aids in emergency coordination, and improves public communications. In particular, we review how mobile devices assist with public safety, disaster planning, and crisis response. We explain how these devices are instrumental in the design and functioning of integrated, multi-layered communications networks. We demonstrate how they have helped save lives and ameliorate human suffering throughout the world