Analysing social media data for disaster preparedness: Understanding the opportunities and barriers faced by humanitarian actors

Crowdsourcing Methods for Data Collection in Geophysics: State of the Art, Issues, and Future Directions

“…Natural hazards, such as floods, wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes, are causing significant losses worldwide, both in terms of lives lost and economic costs (McMullen & Lytle, ; Newman et al, ; Wen et al, ; Westra et al, ). Data are needed to support all stages of natural hazard management, including preparedness and response (Anson et al, ). Examples of such data include real‐time information on the location, extent, and changes in hazards, as well as information on their impacts (e.g., losses, missing persons), to assist with the development of situational awareness (Akhgar et al, ; Stern, ), assess damage and suffering (Akhgar et al, ), and justify actions prior, during, and after disasters (Stern, ).…”

“…Examples of such data include real‐time information on the location, extent, and changes in hazards, as well as information on their impacts (e.g., losses, missing persons), to assist with the development of situational awareness (Akhgar et al, ; Stern, ), assess damage and suffering (Akhgar et al, ), and justify actions prior, during, and after disasters (Stern, ). In addition, data, and models developed with such data, are needed to identify risks and the impact of different risk reduction strategies (Anson et al, ; Newman et al, ).…”

“…The mining of data from social media databases and image/video repositories has received significant attention in natural hazard management (Alexander, ; Goodchild & Glennon, ; Horita et al, ) and can be used to signal and detect hazards, to document and learn from what is happening, and support disaster response activities (Houston et al, ). However, this approach has been used primarily for hazard response activities in order to improve situational awareness (Anson et al, ; Horita et al, ). This is due to the speed and robustness with which information is made available, its low cost and the fact that it can provide text, image/video, and locational information (McSeveny & Waddington, ; Middleton et al, ; Stern, ).…”

Keep Them Engaged: Romanian County Inspectorates for Emergency Situations’ Facebook Usage for Disaster Risk Communication and Beyond

“…Recently, numerous recommendations have emerged from research and practice to guide emergency managers through the process of implementing and maintaining SM pages. These recommendations cover a wide range of topics, such as the identification of the most suitable SM tools/applications to fulfil specific communication objectives [7,11]; the development of policy documents [12] or best practices in order to establish an active presence on SM; and the establishing of a network of stakeholders [13,14].There is a wide range of different SM applications, such as blogs, social networking sites, media-sharing services, web map services and wikis, that can be used for risk and crisis communication in unique ways [15]. In each of these SM applications, stakeholder engagement can be measured in different ways, giving valuable insight on their interactions.…”

“…Recently, numerous recommendations have emerged from research and practice to guide emergency managers through the process of implementing and maintaining SM pages. These recommendations cover a wide range of topics, such as the identification of the most suitable SM tools/applications to fulfil specific communication objectives [7,11]; the development of policy documents [12] or best practices in order to establish an active presence on SM; and the establishing of a network of stakeholders [13,14].…”