Cody Buntain, Richard Mccreadie, & Ian Soboroff. (2022). Incident Streams 2021 Off the Deep End: Deeper Annotations and Evaluations in Twitter. In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 584–604). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: This paper summarizes the final year of the four-year Text REtrieval Conference Incident Streams track (TREC-IS), which has produced a large dataset comprising 136,263 annotated tweets, spanning 98 crisis events. Goals of this final year were twofold: 1) to add new categories for assessing messages, with a focus on characterizing the audience, author, and images associated with these messages, and 2) to enlarge the TREC-IS dataset with new events, with an emphasis of deeper pools for sampling. Beyond these two goals, TREC-IS has nearly doubled the number of annotated messages per event for the 26 crises introduced in 2021 and has released a new parallel dataset of 312,546 images associated with crisis content – with 7,297 tweets having annotations about their embedded images. Our analyses of this new crisis data yields new insights about the context of a tweet; e.g., messages intended for a local audience and those that contain images of weather forecasts and infographics have higher than average assessments of priority but are relatively rare. Tweets containing images, however, have higher perceived priorities than tweets without images. Moving to deeper pools, while tending to lower classification performance, also does not generally impact performance rankings or alter distributions of information-types. We end this paper with a discussion of these datasets, analyses, their implications, and how they contribute both new data and insights to the broader crisis informatics community.
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Rob Grace, & Michelle Potts. (2022). Opportunities for Multisensor Integration in Public-Safety Answering Points. In Rob Grace, & Hossein Baharmand (Eds.), ISCRAM 2022 Conference Proceedings – 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 895–904). Tarbes, France.
Abstract: Public-Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) coordinate emergency response by gathering critical information from 911 callers for dispatch to first responders. However, PSAPs fail to gather this information if 911 callers are unable, unwilling, or unavailable to report key details about an emergency. To address this problem, early-adopter PSAPs employ communication specialists to gather multimedia information from multiple sensing tools, including automated alarms, cameras, government databases, location systems, open-source websites, social media, and alternative communication channels such as text-to-911. Using preliminary usage data from an early- adopter PSAP, this study identifies 11 breakdowns in 911 call taking that create opportunities for multisensor integration. This study then characterizes use cases for multisensor tools based on usage patterns observed across five incident types. These findings highlight multisensor integration as a critical area for crisis informatics research.
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Kerrianne Morrison, Yee-Yin Choong, Shanee Dawkins, & Sandra Spickard Prettyman. (2021). Communication Technology Problems and Needs of Rural First Responders. In Anouck Adrot, Rob Grace, Kathleen Moore, & Christopher W. Zobel (Eds.), ISCRAM 2021 Conference Proceedings – 18th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 817–834). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Although new technology may benefit rural first responders to help them serve their communities, to date little is known about what communication technology problems rural first responders most need addressed and what future technology they desire. To explore the context of use and communication technology problems and needs of rural first responders, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 63 rural first responders across four disciplines: Communications (Comm) Center & 9-1-1 Services, Emergency Medical Services, Fire Service, and Law Enforcement. Using qualitative data analysis, interview data were sorted into problems and needs categories. Rural first responders' greatest problems were with reliable coverage/connectivity, interoperability, implementation/information technology (IT) infrastructure, and physical ergonomics. Rural first responders' greatest need for new technology was to address their current problems, but they were interested in new technology that leverages real-time technology and location tracking. Implications for researchers and developers of public safety communication technology are discussed.
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Steve Peterson, Keri Stephens, Hemant Purohit, & Amanda Hughes. (2019). When Official Systems Overload: A Framework for Finding Social Media Calls for Help during Evacuations. In Z. Franco, J. J. González, & J. H. Canós (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response And Management. Valencia, Spain: Iscram.
Abstract: During large-scale disasters it is not uncommon for Public Safety Answering Points (e.g., 9-1-1) to encounter
service disruptions or become overloaded due to call volume. As observed in the two past United States hurricane
seasons, citizens are increasingly turning to social media whether as a consequence of their inability to reach
9-1-1, or as a preferential means of communications. Relying on past research that has examined social media
use in disasters, combined with the practical knowledge of the first-hand disaster response experiences, this paper
develops a knowledge-driven framework containing parameters useful in identifying patterns of shared
information on social media when citizens need help. This effort explores the feasibility of determining
differences, similarities, common themes, and time-specific discoveries of social media calls for help associated
with hurricane evacuations. At a future date, validation of this framework will be demonstrated using datasets
from multiple disasters. The results will lead to recommendations on how the framework can be modified to make
it applicable as a generic disaster-type characterization tool.
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Jess Kropczynski, Rob Grace, Shane Halse, Doina Caragea, Cornelia Caragea, & Andrea Tapia. (2019). Refining a Coding Scheme to Identify Actionable Information on Social Media. In Z. Franco, J. J. González, & J. H. Canós (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response And Management. Valencia, Spain: Iscram.
Abstract: This paper describes the use of a previously established qualitative coding scheme developed through a design workshop with public safety professionals, and applied the schema to social media data collecting during crises. The intention of applying this scheme to existing crisis datasets was to acquire training data for machine learning. Applying the coding scheme to social media data revealed that additional subcategories of the coding scheme are necessary to satisfy information requirements necessary to dispatch first responders to an incident. The coding scheme was refined and adapted into a set of instructions for qualitative coders on Amazon Mechanical Turk. The contribution of this work is a coding scheme that is more directly related to the information needs of public safety professionals. Implications of early results using the refined coding scheme are discussed in terms of proposed automated methods to identify actionable information for dispatch of first responders during emergency incidents.
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