CrowdSA - Crowdsourced Situation Awareness for Crisis Management

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Partners: FAW, team Gmbh (Frequentis), Netural, Austrian Red Cross

Funding: FFG - BRIDGE

Employed Technologies: Java, twitter4j, GATE, Visual Paradigm, postgreSQL + postGIS, R, RServe

Web: http://crowd.situation-awareness.net

Team: DI Dr. Andrea Salfinger, DI Dr. Andreas Müller, DI (FH) Dr. Stefan Mitsch, Ass. Prof. Mag. Dr. Elisabeth Kapsammer, Assoc. Prof. Mag. Dr. Wieland Schwinger M.Sc., a.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Werner Retschitzegger


Summary of Project Focus. With the enormous rise of social media and ubiquitous mobile access, crowdsourcing applications, where the “wisdom of the crowd” helps solving intricate problems, became more and more popular. The tremendous potential of crowdsourcing has been also recognized for emergency and crisis situations by employing ”citizens as sensors”, being intrinsically motivated and an authentic source for providing valuable situational information not available elsewhere due to damaged or simply non-available infrastructures. This information about unexpected or unusual incidents, damages, mutual aid initiatives or even cries for help can considerably enhance situation awareness of both, responsible authorities and citizens themselves. So far, crowdsourcing has been mainly used for simple collection and dissemination of crisis information without providing smart processing facilities in order to incorporate crowdsourced information into already existing situational pictures.

Going one step further, the innovative goal of our research project crowdSA – Crowdsourced Situation Awareness – is to leverage situation awareness in crisis management by enriching situational crisis pictures assessed on basis of conventional information sources with intelligently sensed crowdsourced information in a comprehensively traceable manner. This will enhance the preparedness of both, responsible authorities and affected citizens to allow for more accurate decisions in crisis situations. In this respect, it is not only envisioned to provide means for sensing diverse social media channels for possibly relevant crisis information but also to actively issue, via these channels, requests for certain missing situational information to a potentially closed group of citizens.

Based on this research focus, crowdSA pursues the following three key research goals. First, crowdSA aims at intelligent sensing of crowdsources by providing appropriate sensor adapters and tuning mechanisms as well as knowledge-based extraction of crowdsourced content. Second, crowdSA focuses on adequate enrichment of situational pictures by proper quality analysis as well as fusion and injection of crisis information. Third, crowdSA targets comprehensive traceability of situational enrichments by providing adequate means for obliviously generating, storing and visualizing provenance information.

The evaluation of crowdSA builds on three major pillars. First, in a case-study definition phase, critical situation types and test cases for a flood crisis scenario, are defined together with our project partners and additional stakeholders. Second, in the course of a post-crisis case study based on collected and publicly available crowddata about previous crisis, forensic analysis will evaluate functional and non-functional criteria. Finally, a real-life data case study will be performed involving a dedicated crowd, namely Red Cross volunteers and targeting visitors at a large-scale festival like the Nova Rock. The evaluation will be planned with an educational aspect in mind, so that best practices for crowdsourced crisis management can be built upon the findings of the evaluation.


Publications:

    2016

  1. Girtelschmid, Sylva, Salfinger, Andrea, Pröll, Birgit, Retschitzegger, Werner, Schwinger, Wieland. Near Real-time Detection of Crisis Situations. 39th International Convention on Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics (MIPRO). June, 2016. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Girtelschmid.2016,
       title = {Near Real-time Detection of Crisis Situations},
       author = {Girtelschmid, Sylva and Salfinger, Andrea and Pr{\"o}ll, Birgit and Retschitzegger, Werner and Schwinger, Wieland},
       year = {2016},
       booktitle = {39th International Convention on Information and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics (MIPRO)},
       month = {06}
    }
  2. Salfinger, Andrea, Salfinger, Caroline, Pröll, Birgit, Retschitzegger, Werner, Schwinger, Wieland. Pinpointing the Eye of the Hurricane - Creating a Gold-Standard Corpus for Situative Geo-Coding of Crisis Tweets Based on Linked Open Data. Proceedings of the LREC 2016 Workshop "LDL 2016 – 5th Workshop on Linked Data in Linguistics: Managing, Building and Using Linked Language Resources". John P. McCrae, Christian Chiarcos et al., editors, pages: 27 - 35. May, 2016. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Salfinger.2016c,
       title = {Pinpointing the Eye of the Hurricane - Creating a Gold-Standard Corpus for Situative Geo-Coding of Crisis Tweets Based on Linked Open Data},
       author = {Salfinger, Andrea and Salfinger, Caroline and Pr{\"o}ll, Birgit and Retschitzegger, Werner and Schwinger, Wieland},
       year = {2016},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the LREC 2016 Workshop "LDL 2016 – 5th Workshop on Linked Data in Linguistics: Managing, Building and Using Linked Language Resources"},
       pages = {27 - 35},
       month = {05}
    }
  3. Salfinger, Andrea, Schwinger, Wieland, Retschitzegger, Werner, Pröll, Birgit. Mining the Disaster Hotspots - Situation-Adaptive Crowd Knowledge Extraction for Crisis Management. Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE International Multi-Disciplinary Conference on Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support (CogSIMA). pages: 219 - 225. IEEE, March, 2016. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Salfinger.2016b,
       title = {Mining the Disaster Hotspots - Situation-Adaptive Crowd Knowledge Extraction for Crisis Management},
       author = {Salfinger, Andrea and Schwinger, Wieland and Retschitzegger, Werner and Pr{\"o}ll, Birgit},
       year = {2016},
       publisher = {IEEE},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE International Multi-Disciplinary Conference on Cognitive Methods  in Situation Awareness and Decision Support (CogSIMA)},
       pages = {219 - 225},
       month = {03}
    }
  4. Andrea Salfinger, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger, Birgit Pröll. Towards a Crowd-Sensing Enhanced Situation Awareness System for Crisis Management. Fusion Methodologies in Crisis Management: Higher Level Fusion and Decision Making. Springer International Publishing, 2016. BibTeX 
    @inbook{Sal.2016a,
       title = {Towards a Crowd-Sensing Enhanced Situation Awareness System for Crisis Management},
       author = {Andrea Salfinger and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger and Birgit Pr\"{o}ll},
       year = {2016},
       publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
       booktitle = {Fusion Methodologies in Crisis Management: Higher Level Fusion and Decision Making},
       chapter = {Towards a Crowd-Sensing Enhanced Situation Awareness System for Crisis Management},
       pages = {177-211}
    }
  5. "Salfinger, Andrea". Staying Aware in an Evolving World: Evolution Support for Situation Awareness in Control Centers. 2016. BibTeX 
    @phdthesis{DISS_Salfinger,
       title = {{Staying Aware in an Evolving World: Evolution Support for Situation Awareness in Control Centers}},
       author = {"Salfinger, Andrea"},
       year = {2016},
       type = {{DISS}}
    }

    6. 2015

  6. Salfinger, Andrea, Retschitzegger, Werner, Schwinger, Wieland, Pröll, Birgit. crowdSA - Towards Adaptive and Situation-Driven Crowd-Sensing for Disaster Situation Awareness. Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE International Multi-Disciplinary Conference on Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support (CogSIMA). Orlando, USA,pages: 14-20. IEEE, March, 2015. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Salfinger2015a,
       title = {crowdSA - Towards Adaptive and Situation-Driven Crowd-Sensing for Disaster Situation Awareness},
       author = {Salfinger, Andrea and Retschitzegger, Werner and Schwinger, Wieland and Pröll, Birgit},
       year = {2015},
       publisher = {IEEE},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE International Multi-Disciplinary Conference on Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support (CogSIMA)},
       pages = {14-20},
       month = {03},
       address = {Orlando, USA},
       isbn = {978-1-4799-8015-4},
       type = {PAPREFCONF}
    }
  7. Andrea Salfinger, Sylva Girtelschmid, Birgit Pröll, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. Crowd-Sensing Meets Situation Awareness - A Research Roadmap for Crisis Management. Procceedings of the 48th Annual Hawaii Intl. Conf. on System Sciences (HICSS). Kauai, Hawaii, January, 2015. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Salfinger2015,
       title = {{Crowd-Sensing Meets Situation Awareness - A Research Roadmap for Crisis Management}},
       author = {Andrea Salfinger and Sylva Girtelschmid and Birgit Pr\"{o}ll and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2015},
       booktitle = {Procceedings of the 48th Annual Hawaii Intl. Conf. on System Sciences (HICSS)},
       month = {01},
       address = {Kauai, Hawaii}
    }

    8. 2014

  8. Andrea Salfinger, Daniel Neidhart, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger, Stefan Mitsch. SEM2 suite - Towards a tool suite for supporting knowledge management in situation awareness systems. Proceedings of the 15th IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration, IRI 2014, Redwood City, CA, USA, August 13-15, 2014. San Francisco, CA, USA,pages: 351--360. August, 2014. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{DBLP:conf/iri/SalfingerNRSM14,
       title = {SEM2 suite - Towards a tool suite for supporting knowledge               management in situation awareness systems},
       author = {Andrea Salfinger and               Daniel Neidhart and               Werner Retschitzegger and               Wieland Schwinger and               Stefan Mitsch},
       year = {2014},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the 15th {IEEE} International Conference on Information               Reuse and Integration, {IRI} 2014, Redwood City, CA, USA, August 13-15,               2014},
       pages = {351--360},
       month = {08},
       address = {San Francisco, CA, USA}
    }
  9. Andrea Salfinger, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. Staying Aware in an Evolving World - Specifying and Tracking Evolving Situations. IEEE International Inter-Disciplinary Conference on Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support (CogSIMA) (CogSIMA 2014). San Antonio, USA,pages: 180-186. March, 2014. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Salfinger2014,
       title = {{Staying Aware in an Evolving World - Specifying and Tracking Evolving Situations}},
       author = {Andrea Salfinger and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2014},
       booktitle = {IEEE International Inter-Disciplinary Conference on Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support (CogSIMA) (CogSIMA 2014)},
       pages = {180-186},
       month = {03},
       address = {San Antonio, USA}
    }

    10. 2013

  10. Stefan Mitsch, Andreas Müller, Werner Retschitzegger, Andrea Salfinger, Wieland Schwinger. A Survey on Clustering Techniques for Situation Awareness. Proc. of the 15th Asia-Pacific Web Conference (APWeb 2013). Ishikawa, Yoshiharu and Li Jianzhong and Wang Wei and Zhang Wenjie, editors, Heidelberg,Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages: 815--826. Springer, 2013. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Mitsch2013,
       title = {{A Survey on Clustering Techniques for Situation Awareness}},
       author = {Stefan Mitsch and Andreas M{\"u}ller and Werner Retschitzegger and Andrea Salfinger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2013},
       publisher = {Springer},
       booktitle = {{P}roc. of the 15th {A}sia-{P}acific {W}eb {C}onference ({A}{P}{W}eb 2013)},
       pages = {815--826},
       series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
       address = {Heidelberg},
       isbn = {978-3-642-37400}
    }
  11. Birgit Pröll, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger, Elisabeth Kapsammer, Stefan Mitsch, Norbert Baumgartner, Gustavo Rossi, Gerald Czech, Jürgen Högl. crowdSA - Crowdsourced Situation Awareness for Crisis Management. Proceedings of Social Media and Semantic Technologies in Emergency Response (SMERST). 2013. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Proell2013,
       title = {{crowdSA - Crowdsourced Situation Awareness for Crisis Management}},
       author = {Birgit Pr\"{o}ll and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger and Elisabeth Kapsammer and Stefan Mitsch and Norbert Baumgartner and Gustavo Rossi and Gerald Czech and J\"{u}rgen H\"{o}gl},
       year = {2013},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of Social Media and Semantic Technologies in Emergency Response (SMERST)}
    }
  12. Andrea Salfinger, Werner Retschitzegger, Wieland Schwinger. Maintaining Situation Awareness Over Time - A Survey on the Evolution Support of Situation Awareness Systems. Proceedings of the IEEE 18th International Conference on Technologies and Applications of Artifical Intelligence (TAAI). 2013. PDF BibTeX 
    @inproceedings{Salfinger2013,
       title = {{Maintaining Situation Awareness Over Time - A Survey on the Evolution Support of Situation Awareness Systems}},
       author = {Andrea Salfinger and Werner Retschitzegger and Wieland Schwinger},
       year = {2013},
       booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE 18th International Conference on Technologies and Applications of Artifical Intelligence (TAAI)}
    }