A Volunteered Geographic Information Framework to Enable Bottom-Up Disaster Management Platforms

Mohammad Poorazizi,Stefan Steiniger,Andrew Hunter

doi:10.3390/ijgi4031389

Abstract

Recent disasters, such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, have drawn attention to the potential role of citizens as active information producers. By using location-aware devices such as smartphones to collect geographic information in the form of geo-tagged text, photos, or videos, and sharing this information through online social media, such as Twitter, citizens create Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). To effectively use this information for disaster management, we developed a VGI framework for the discovery of VGI. This framework consists of four components: (i) a VGI brokering module to provide a standard service interface to retrieve VGI from multiple resources based on spatial, temporal, and semantic parameters; (ii) a VGI quality control component, which employs semantic filtering and cross-referencing techniques to evaluate VGI; (iii) a VGI publisher module, which uses a service-based delivery mechanism to disseminate VGI, and (iv) a VGI discovery component to locate, browse, and query metadata about available VGI datasets. In a case study we employed a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) strategy, open standards/specifications, and free/open data to show the utility of the framework. We demonstrate that the framework can facilitate data discovery for disaster management. The addition of quality metrics and a single aggregated source of relevant crisis VGI will allow users to make informed policy choices that could save lives, meet basic humanitarian needs earlier, and perhaps limit environmental and economic damage.

Highlights

Sharing up-to-date and accurate information is an effective strategy for improving disaster management activities [1]
We develop a framework for the discovery and use of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) in disaster management platforms that consists of four components: (i) a VGI brokering module to provide a standard service interface to retrieve VGI from multiple resources based on spatial, temporal, and quality search parameters; (ii) a VGI quality control component to evaluate the spatiotemporal relevance and credibility of VGI; (iii) a VGI publisher module, which uses a service-based delivery mechanism to disseminate VGI; and (iv) a VGI discovery component, which acts as a catalog service to find, browse, and query metadata about available VGI datasets
We state with caution that given the data, our results indicate that Flickr provides the highest quality data with 72.7% of the data falling in Level 3 or higher, followed by Instagram (30.6%), Google Plus (19.2%), and Twitter with 0.9%

Summary

Introduction

Sharing up-to-date and accurate information is an effective strategy for improving disaster management activities [1]. Disaster management platforms have the potential to foster that strategy by providing (online) tools that allow the collection, analysis, and distribution of spatial, temporal, and thematic information. Such platforms should be able to handle incoming crisis data, visualize information, and develop future scenarios, which, ideally, help mitigate further negative disaster effects [4]. As such, these systems have the potential to minimize destruction, economic loss, and death that might otherwise result from a disaster event. Ushahidi (http://www.ushahidi.com/) has been used extensively to help people find and use critical emergency information in different situations, from political crises [5] to natural disasters [6]

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Conclusion