Data Mining and Machine Learning Lab

Lessons Learned in Using Social Media forDisaster Relief

- ASU Crisis Response Game

Mohammad Ali Abbasi, Shamanth Kumar, Huan LiuComputer Science and Engineering, Arizona State University

Jose Augusto Andrade Filho Department of Computer Science-ICMC, University of Sao Paulo

Data Mining and Machine Learning Lab

Social Media, Disaster Relief, Game

• People used Social Media to send their report or requests during disasters or emergencies– Haiti earthquake, Hurricane Irene, Tsunami in Japan

• Twitter was one of the first sources of eyewitness information during the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008

• Many HA/DR agencies are planning to use social media in disaster recovery efforts

• To test Social Media for Disaster Relief effort in a simulated controlled environment we designed a ASU Crisis Response Game

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Data Mining and Machine Learning Lab

Social Media, Disaster Relief, Game

• Social Media in disasters or crises– Haiti earthquake (2010)– Hurricane Irene (2011)– Tsunami in Japan (2011)

• We designed ASU Crisis Response Game to:

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Create a training capability to understand

the effective use of social media in crisis

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Game Scenario

• A disaster or an emergency happened• People use social media to report

damages or ask for help• NGO

– Collect data from social media – Filter and rank requests– Create missions– Send First responders to help victims

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ASU Crisis Response Game

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ASU Crisis Response Game

• 75 Volunteers played for 4 hours• 25 Teams of victims• 8 Teams of First-responders• 20 People in Command center• 7 Different locations in ASU campus

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Game Exercise and Lessons Learned

• Collecting Tweets and Short Messages– Two redundant systems

• Filtering system (Manual or Automatic?)– Clustering, Spam detection, Ranking

• Educating people– People don’t know how to use social media during crisis

• GeoLocation information– Usually not included

• Language– Text analysis tools usually can handle English

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Thanks!

Mohammad-Ali Abbasi

ali2@asu.edu

Acknowledgments:

This research was sponsored in part by the Office of Naval Research

We would also like to thank

• Members of DMML Lab and all volunteers from ASU

• Our collaborators Catherine Graham from Humanity Road Inc.

• Mark Bradshaw and his team from NSWCDD, Office of Joint Staff

• Dr. Rebecca Goolsby from ONR

• Professor Kathleen Carley and her team from CMU