Abstract: Social or new media have over the past years become an integrated part of human communication, both as a means to establish and maintain social relationships, but also as a means of sharing and co-creating information. New media comes with an array of possibilities for individuals as well as organisations, corporations and authorities. Within the field of crisis communication new media possibilities, such as online sharing and social networking, has had an impact on the way crisis information is disseminated and updated. This paper addresses the issues related to using new media as a means of communicating crisis information and broadcasting alerting messages to the general population, and also discusses the role of new media in future pan-European alerting. It focuses on current and on-going research on social media for crisis communication. An extensive systematic literature review was done to identify factors that affect the use of social media for alerting and warning. These factors were mirrored in experiences, collected through interviews, in crisis communication organisations in three European regions (Sweden, Czech Republic and Spain). The factors finally form the basis for suggestions regarding the design of technological tools for both communication and information collection as part of a pan-European alerting system. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: Recently, the concept of robustness measurement has become clearly important especially with the rise of risky events such as natural disasters and mortal pandemics. In this context, this paper proposes an overview of a hardware architecture for massive data collection in the aim of evaluating robustness indicators. This paper essentially addresses the theoretical and general problems that the scientific research is seeking to address in this area, offers a literature review of what already exists and, based on preliminary diagnosis of what the literature has, presents a new approach and some of the targeted findings with a focus on the leading aspects, having a primary objective of explaining the multiple aspects of this research work.

Abstract: During crises directly affected people and observers join social media communities to discuss the event. They may share information relevant to response coordination, for example, specific resource needs. However, responders face a massive data overload and lack the time to monitor social media traffic for important and trustworthy information. To address these challenges, response teams may attempt manual filtering methods, resulting in limited coverage and quality. Hence, we propose a computational framework for extracting specific resource-related information, and an interface for identifying and engaging with influential participants in the dynamic, evolving social media community. Our approach helps to identify those virtual responders who serve both as sources and disseminators of important information to assist in coordinated emergency response.

Abstract: The recent rise of Social Media services has created huge streams of information which can be very valuable in a variety of scenarios. One specific scenario that has received interest is how Social Media analytics can be beneficial in crisis situations. In this paper, we describe our vision for a Social Media-ready command and control center. As motivation for our work, we present a short analysis of tweets issued in NYC during Hurricane Sandy in late October 2012 and we give an overview of the architecture of our event detection subsystem.

Abstract: Information-intensive services for global crisis situations management can no longer be based on local information only. A global picture is required to be able to make informed and reliable local decisions. It takes also to know how the local decisions one country may take will affect the others. Indeed, each country, city or community needs the whole picture and the key facts in managing the situation in their local area. Therefore, we should provide a proven solution to identify, analyze and mix the relevant information to support informed local decision based on both global and local information. In this paper, we introduce a novel design pattern to face this challenge of making informed local decisions. We also provide two real life examples illustrating the needs of the design pattern.

Abstract: One of the key assumptions in Endsley's three-level Situation Awareness (SA) model is the critical role of mental models in the development and maintenance of SA. We explored a prescriptive way of modeling this essential mental process of the fire incident commanders' fire ground assessment. The modeling was drawn from the Fast and Frugal Heuristics (FFHs) program, given the strong parallels between its contentions on ecological rationality and the environment demanding of the emergency response context. This paper addresses a number of issues being encountered in the attempt of our empirical investigation.

Abstract: In this practitioner report, we present the experiences with the use of the serious game Water Coach in a national training for crisis response professionals in the Netherlands. This paper describes the set-up of the training and its learning objectives. We explain the usability of the Water Coach in such a training and the extended functionalities that were required. Finally, the evaluation of the training, in which we focus on the added value of a serious game in the training for crisis response, is presented. © 2012 ISCRAM.

Abstract: We examine microblogged information generated during two different co-occurring natural hazards events in Spring 2009. Due to its rapid and widespread adoption, microblogging in emergency response is a place for serious consideration and experimentation for future application. Because microblogging is comprised of a set of practices shaped by a number of forces, it is important to measure and describe the diffuse, multiparty information exchange behaviors to anticipate how emergency governance might best play a role. Here we direct consideration toward information propagation properties in the Twitterverse, describing features of information redistribution related to the retweet (RT ) convention. Our analysis shows that during an emergency, for tweets authored by local users and tweets that contain emergency-related search terms, retweets are more likely than non-retweets to be about the event. We note that users are more likely to retweet information originally distributed through Twitter accounts run by media, especially the local media, and traditional service organizations. Comparing local users to the broader audience, we also find that tweet-based information redistribution is different for those who are local to an emergency event.

Abstract: Currently there are serious problems with organizational abilities to plan the response to emergencies. This paper presents a fundamental premise that the use of a game employing competing human teams operating on a continuous asynchronous basis over long periods of time is the way to develop high confidence emergency plans within a given organization.

Abstract: This paper describes the approach to implement network centric operations (NCO) in the Dutch crisis management domain. NCO resolves a number of important shortcomings related to the supply and flow of information experienced in current verbal communication-based crisis management. First, we provide a description of the crisis management organization in the Netherlands and the nature of information supply problems. Second, we explain how a network centric approach would be implemented in this domain. Next, we describe how between 2005 and 2008 several regions in the Netherlands have made efforts to implement a network-approach, and we evaluate their experiences. The NCO approach reduces the need for reliability checks of verbal communication. Consequently procedures can be optimized with NCO. This paper concludes with next steps, such as continuing to explore the effects of NCO on the current way of working and train people to work in a network centric environment.

Abstract: Social Media data allows for profound analyses of user-generated content in order to predict or manage disasters and crisis situations. In this paper, we present an analysis of tweets from and about Al Za'atari, a refugee camp in Jordan close to the Syrian border. Our results are based on the analysis of location-tagged tweets by our “Avalanche” system in order to support an accurate situational awareness picture for on-site and off-site operators from relief organizations on evolving events and challenges.

Abstract: We developed a series of inexpensive but accurate mobile radiation detectors, which we named Pocket Geiger (POKEGA), to address the urgent desire of ordinary people to measure and share radiation levels in their milieus and to discuss the results of the Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima, Japan. This action research reports on a new style of pragmatic model of radiation monitoring, which employs the features of Participatory Design and Participatory Sensing and adopts modern communication platforms such as crowd-funding, open source development, and Facebook. This paper proposes an interaction model between the project management body, and other inclusive corroborators, e.g., ordinary users and experts, and focuses on three development phases of the project: start-up phase, evaluation phase, and operation phase. This paper also considers a reliability assurance model on disaster information sharing between the citizen layer and the official layer by data sharing and discussion activities in the POKEGA community.