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Briony Gray, Mark Weal, & David Martin. (2018). Building Resilience in Small Island Developing States: Social Media during the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane Season. In Kristin Stock, & Deborah Bunker (Eds.), Proceedings of ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience – 1st International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Asia Pacific. (pp. 469–479). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: There are growing concerns that future Atlantic hurricane seasons will be severe and unpredictable due to underlying factors such as climate change. The 2017 season may offer a range of lessons, especially to small island developing states (SIDS), who are looking to build community resilience and heighten community engagement to cope with disaster. While many SIDS utilise a range of media and technology for these purposes, there has been a recent uptake in the use of social media, which may have further potential to support their goals. This paper scopes the use and users of social media in the case of Antigua and Barbuda during the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season. Through a series of qualitative interviews it explains the role that social media currently has, and concludes with suggestions for its improvement in future seasons that are contextualized over the disaster lifecycle phases.
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Hongmin Li, Xukun Li, Doina Caragea, & Cornelia Caragea. (2018). Comparison of Word Embeddings and Sentence Encodings for Generalized Representations in Crisis Tweet Classifications. In Kristin Stock, & Deborah Bunker (Eds.), Proceedings of ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience – 1st International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Asia Pacific. (pp. 480–493). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: Many machine learning and natural language processing techniques, including supervised and domain adaptation algorithms, have been proposed and studied in the context of filtering crisis tweets. However, applying these approaches in real-time is still challenging because of time-critical requirements of emergency response operations and also diversities and unique characteristics of emergency events. In this paper, we explore the idea of building “generalized” classifiers for filtering crisis tweets that can be pre-trained, and are thus ready to use in real-time, while generalizing well on future disasters/crises data. We propose to achieve this using simple feature based adaptation with tweet representations based on word embeddings and also sentence-level embeddings, representations which do not rely on unlabeled data to achieve domain adaptations and can be easily implemented. Given that there are different types of word/sentence embeddings that are widely used, we propose to compare them to get a general idea about which type works better with crisis tweets classification tasks. Our experimental results show that GloVe embeddings in general work better with the datasets used in our evaluation, and that the supervised algorithms used in our experiments benefit from GloVe embeddings trained specifically on crisis data. Furthermore, our experimental results show that following GloVe, the sentence embeddings have great potential in crisis tweet tasks.
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Jess Kropczynski, Rob Grace, Julien Coche, Shane Halse, Eric Obeysekare, Aurélie Montarnal, et al. (2018). Identifying Actionable Information on Social Media for Emergency Dispatch. In Kristin Stock, & Deborah Bunker (Eds.), Proceedings of ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience – 1st International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Asia Pacific. (pp. 428–438). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: Crisis informatics researchers have taken great interest in methods to identify information relevant to crisis events posted by digital bystanders on social media. This work codifies the information needs of emergency dispatchers and first responders as a method to identify actionable information on social media. Through a design workshop with public safety professionals at a Public-Safety Answering Point (PSAP) in the United States, we develop a set of information requirements that must be satisfied to dispatch first responders and meet their immediate situational awareness needs. We then present a manual coding scheme to identify information satisfying these requirements in social media posts and apply this scheme to fictitious tweets professionals propose as actionable information to better assess ways that this information may be communicated. Finally, we propose automated methods from previous literature in the field that can be used to implement these methods in the future.
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Linda Plotnick, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Sukeshini Grandhi, & Julie Dugdale. (2018). Real or Fake? User Behavior and Attitudes Related to Determining the Veracity of Social Media Posts. In Kristin Stock, & Deborah Bunker (Eds.), Proceedings of ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience – 1st International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Asia Pacific. (pp. 439–449). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: Citizens and Emergency Managers need to be able to distinguish “fake” (untrue) news posts from real news posts on social media during disasters. This paper is based on an online survey conducted in 2018 that produced 341 responses from invitations distributed via email and through Facebook. It explores to what extent and how citizens generally assess whether postings are “true” or “fake,” and describes indicators of the trustworthiness of content that users would like. The mean response on a semantic differential scale measuring how frequently users attempt to verify the news trustworthiness (a scale from 1-never to 5-always) was 3.37. The most frequent message characteristics citizens' use are grammar and the trustworthiness of the sender. Most respondents would find an indicator of trustworthiness helpful, with the most popular choice being a colored graphic. Limitations and implications for assessments of trustworthiness during disasters are discussed.
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Marta Poblet Balcell, Stan Karanasios, & Vanessa Cooper. (2018). Look after Your Neighbours: Social Media and Vulnerable Groups during Extreme Weather Events. In Kristin Stock, & Deborah Bunker (Eds.), Proceedings of ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience – 1st International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Asia Pacific. (pp. 408–415). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: Emergency management organisations across the world routinely use social media to reach out populations for preparedness and response to extreme weather events. In this paper we present a preliminary analysis of social media strategies towards vulnerable populations in the State of Victoria (Australia). Using the notion of vulnerability in an emergency management context (e.g. older persons, socially/geographically isolated persons, people with disabilities, refugee/recent migrant communities) we explore whether and how organisations address vulnerable groups with targeted messages. Our initial findings suggest that organisations do not tend to interact directly with these groups. Rather, reliance on 'information brokers' (intermediary organisations and individuals with an expected duty of care) seems to be a preferred strategy.
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Maryam Shahbazi, Christian Ehnis, Majid Shahbazi, & Deborah Bunker. (2018). Tweeting from the Shadows: Social Media Convergence Behaviour During the 2017 Iran-Iraq Earthquake. In Kristin Stock, & Deborah Bunker (Eds.), Proceedings of ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience – 1st International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Asia Pacific. (pp. 416–427). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: Official policies, socioeconomic and demographic factors influence how individuals cope with, and respond to natural disasters. Understanding the impact of these factors in social media crisis communications studies is difficult. This paper focuses on convergence behaviour during social media crisis communication in an environment where the access to commercial social media platforms is highly restricted. This study is designed as a case which analyses 41,745 Tweets communicated during an earthquake event and for the two weeks after. This research aims to understand how different communities use social media services for communication during extreme events. The content of the Tweets shows users' attitudes toward government policies as well as the social difficulties of ethnic groups reflecting on the use of social media in crises communication. The results indicate a “political effect” on this online crisis communication. This behaviour was not expected and has been underreported in the current body of knowledge.
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Ryo Otaka, Osamu Uchida, & Keisuke Utsu. (2018). Prototype of Notification and Status Monitoring System Using LINE Smartphone Application to Support Local Communities. In Kristin Stock, & Deborah Bunker (Eds.), Proceedings of ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience – 1st International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Asia Pacific. (pp. 450–458). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: Japanese society is aging rapidly, so an increasing number of households currently consists of only elderly single people or couples. We propose a system that uses LINE (a mobile communication application) for sending notices containing information from local governments to elderly or physically disabled people, as well as for efficient monitoring by local governments and social workers of the health conditions and statuses of such people. Our system can be used by anyone who has a smartphone with LINE installed. We have also conducted an operational test of a prototype of our system.
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Shuji Nishikawa, Osamu Uchida, & Keisuke Utsu. (2018). Introduction of a Tracking Map to a Web Application for Location Recording and Rescue Request. In Kristin Stock, & Deborah Bunker (Eds.), Proceedings of ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience – 1st International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management Asia Pacific. (pp. 459–468). Albany, Auckland, New Zealand: Massey Univeristy.
Abstract: We developed a web application for location recording and rescue request using Twitter (T-Pl@ce). This application helps supported users (e.g., older adults, persons with disabilities, and children) who require support to share their location coordinates via Twitter. Supporting users (e.g., families, relatives, or neighbors) of the supported user can then check the location coordinates of the supported user when required. When the supported user needs to be rescued, he/she can post a rescue request on Twitter by pressing the “Rescue request” button on the application. In this study, we introduce the e-mail notification function to reliably notify a rescue request to the system administrator. In addition, to track the location of the supported user, we introduce a location tracking function. Then, the administrator, the emergency assistance employees (e.g., rescue experts or social workers), or the supporting user can refer to the request and the location tracking page and execute the support and rescue activities.
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