Harnessing the Crowdsourcing Power of Social Media for Disaster ...

Figure 2. Food requests after the Haiti earthquake. The Ushahisi-Haiti crisis map helps organizations intuitively ascertain wheresupplies are most needed.geo-location point. Someone mighttext the crisis map’s phone numberto report something they saw earlier,possibly texting from a shelter abouta bridge that collapsed 10 miles downthe road. Furthermore, fraud reportsfrom malicious persons might appearas normal requests on crisis map. Inaddition, there are often duplicatereports, and information essentialfor relief coordination is not readilyavailable or easily accessible, such aslists of relief resources or communicationprocedures and relief organizationcontact information.Lastly, current crowdsourcing applicationsdo not have adequate securityfeatures for relief organizationsand relief operations. For example,crowdsourcing applications that arepublicly available for reporting arealso publicly available for viewing.Although it is important to provideinformation to the public, this cancreate conflicts when decisions mustbe made about where and when reliefresources are needed. In somecircumstances, relief workers themselvesmight be targeted by nefariousgroups, so publicizing details aboutrelief efforts could endanger them.Challenges and ResearchIssuesSocial media as a crowdsourcingmechanism provides aggregate situationalawareness, important andnew communications pathways, andsome opportunities for assistance onan individual level. However, to makecrowdsourcing a useful tool, we mustaddress several challenges to leverageboth the data and communicationscapabilities, including sensemaking,security, and coordination. To tacklethese problems, we can employ textmining and social computing technologiesby managing social knowledgeand modeling social behavior duringthe disaster relief. 11Geo-tag DeterminationAs we mentioned earlier, crowdsourceddata might include inaccurategeo-tags, or might not includethem at all. Thus, using social miningto consider both a reporter’s socialand physical networks couldhelp locate a report’s actual spatialfeatures.In addition, research has shown theneed to leverage the information availablefrom the response group. For example,to supplement crowdsourcinginformation, groupsourcing 10 collectsdisaster information such as a reliefsituation summary, validated geotaginformation, and transportationconditions provided by a sanctionedgroup consisting of individuals withdisparate resources, goals, and capabilitiesworking at the disaster scene.Report VerificationTo some degree, crowdsourcing canautomatically filter reports throughphotos, videos, and comments fromother reports. Ushahidi, for example,lets users verify a report by clickinga verification button. It leaves theverification problem to the crowdsto get collective feedback. However,this strategy—an open self-adjustingmethod, in technical terms—dependson a large number of people validatingthe reports. For Ushahidi maps,however, generally only a few people12 www.computer.org/intelligent Ieee INTELLIGenT SYSTemS