Using Artificial Intelligence and Social Media for Disaster Response and Management: An Overview
The ever-increasing popularity of social media platforms has transformed the way in which information is shared during disasters and mass emergencies. Information that emanates from social media, especially in the early hours of a disaster when little-to-
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Using Artificial Intelligence and Social Media for Disaster Response and Management: An Overview Ferda Ofli, Muhammad Imran, and Firoj Alam
Introduction During disasters and emergencies, humanitarian organizations, government agencies, public health authorities, and military are tasked with responsibilities to help affected and vulnerable populations (Gralla, Goentzel, & Van de Walle, 2013). These formal response organizations rely on timely and credible information to make rapid decisions to launch relief operations. The information needs of these stakeholders vary depending on their role, responsibilities, and the circumstances that they deal with (Vieweg, Castillo, & Imran, 2014). However, during time- critical situations, the importance of timely and factual information increases, especially when no information from other traditional sources such as TV or radio is available (Castillo, 2016; Vieweg, 2012).
F. Ofli (*) • M. Imran • F. Alam Qatar Computing Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. V. V. Kumar, K. Sud (eds.), AI and Robotics in Disaster Studies, Disaster Research and Management Series on the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4291-6_5
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The growing use of mobile technologies and social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook has provided general public with practical and effective opportunities to disseminate and ingest information. Millions of people increasingly use social media to share information during natural or human-induced disasters (Castillo, 2016; A. L. Hughes & Palen, 2009; Purohit et al., 2014). For instance, victims of several recent hurricanes, including Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, and Hurricane Florence, have turned to social media to request help and assistance, as emergency hotlines were sometimes unreachable due to the high volume of calls (Frej, 2018; MacMillan, 2017; Rhodan, 2017). According to Rhodan (2017), a woman with two children were rescued during Hurricane Harvey after the woman posted a message asking for help on Twitter: “I have 2 children with me and tge [sic] water is swallowing us up. Please send help.” Similarly, an image showing elderly residents sitting in greenish flood water was shared on Twitter more than 4800 times, which elicited an urgent help being dispatched to the nursing home (Rhodan, 2017). Research studies have demonstrated the usefulness of social media information for a variety of humanitarian tasks to increase “situational awareness” (e.g., gaining insights into the situation as it unfolds, identifying reports about missing and found people, understanding urgent needs of the affected communities, and assessing the severity of damage) (Starbird, Palen, Hughes, & Vieweg, 2010; Vieweg, 2012). Although, information available on social media could be useful for response agencies, making sense of it under time-critical situations is a challenging task (Hiltz & Plotnick, 2013). For instance,
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