scholarly journals Fundamentals of Volunteered Geographic Information in Disaster Management Related to Floods

Author(s):  
Stathis G. Arapostathis

The main purpose of this chapter is to introduce fundamental knowledge regarding the notion of volunteered geographic information (VGI) and its applications in disaster management (DM) of events related to floods. Initially, the meaning of the term is defined along with certain properties and general trends that characterize VGI. A brief literature review unfolds the range of activities that compose that certain term, along with its applications to flood event management. Those applications cover significant aspects of both VGI and DM cycle: from participatory activities of volunteers up to pure data analysis, extracted from social media and other VGI sources, while, in terms of DM cycle, from mitigation up to response and recovery. Finally, a set of four main clusters of open challenges is addressed. Those clusters accumulate the vast majority of open topics on this research field.

Author(s):  
Milad Mirbabaie ◽  
Christian Ehnis ◽  
Stefan Stieglitz ◽  
Deborah Bunker ◽  
Tanja Rose

AbstractSocial media has become an important channel of communication in emergency and disaster management. Emergency Management Agencies can distribute helpful and important information to the general public and also gather information to enrich their management efforts. This, however, remains challenging since several communication-related barriers occur. This study investigates how the concept of Nudging, a form of behaviour adjustment, can be applied to address these barriers. A Systematic Literature Review and qualitative social media data analysis methods were applied to explore the potential of digital nudges on social media. Twelve forms of digital nudges could be identified in the data that influenced the visibility of the messages they occurred in. The results suggest that Digital Nudging on Social Media is a promising approach to use in emergency and disaster communication.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 497
Author(s):  
Haydn Lawrence ◽  
Colin Robertson ◽  
Rob Feick ◽  
Trisalyn Nelson

Social media and other forms of volunteered geographic information (VGI) are used frequently as a source of fine-grained big data for research. While employing geographically referenced social media data for a wide array of purposes has become commonplace, the relevant scales over which these data apply to is typically unknown. For researchers to use VGI appropriately (e.g., aggregated to areal units (e.g., neighbourhoods) to elicit key trend or demographic information), general methods for assessing the quality are required, particularly, the explicit linkage of data quality and relevant spatial scales, as there are no accepted standards or sampling controls. We present a data quality metric, the Spatial-comprehensiveness Index (S-COM), which can delineate feasible study areas or spatial extents based on the quality of uneven and dynamic geographically referenced VGI. This scale-sensitive approach to analyzing VGI is demonstrated over different grains with data from two citizen science initiatives. The S-COM index can be used both to assess feasible study extents based on coverage, user-heterogeneity, and density and to find feasible sub-study areas from a larger, indefinite area. The results identified sub-study areas of VGI for focused analysis, allowing for a larger adoption of a similar methodology in multi-scale analyses of VGI.


Author(s):  
M. M. Yagoub

The number of smart phones that are supported by location facility like Global Positioning System (GPS), Camera and connected to the internet has increased sharply in UAE during the last five years. This increase offers a chance to capitalize on using these devices as resources for data collection, therefore reducing cost. In many cases specific events may happen in areas or at time where there may be no governmental departments to collect such unrepeated events. The current research will showcase various studies that had been conducted on Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) debating various aspects such as accuracy, legal issues, and privacy. This research will also integrate Geographic Information System (GIS), VGI, social media tools, data mining, and mobile technology to design a conceptual framework for promoting public participation in UAE. The data gathered through survey will be helpful in correlating various aspects of VGI. Since there are diverse views about these aspects, policy makers are left undecided in many countries about how to deal with VGI. The assessment of the UAE case will contribute to the age-long debate by examining the willingness of the public to participate. The result will show the public perception to be as sensors for data collection. Additionally, the potential of citizen involvement in the risk and disaster management process by providing voluntary data collected for VGI applications will also be explored in the paper.


Author(s):  
H. K. Sevinç ◽  
I. R. Karaş

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> In times of crisis, it is a priority to get help as soon as possible and any kind of help can be accepted. Especially, all kinds of support by volunteers, is a great help in crisis resolution. Crisis locations can be developed or less developed regions. It is sometimes difficult to reach help and support in less developed regions. To create Geographic data, which is an important requirement in crisis situations, is time-consuming and costly when attempted to be produced by conventional methods. When the data is produced by volunteers, it is faster and less costly because experts try to reach and support the region. Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is spatial data that has been contributed for free by volunteers. In our work, that is review, the examples of Volunteered Geographic Information applications in crisis management will be shown on the poster.</p>


Author(s):  
Kuo-Chih Hung ◽  
Mohsen Kalantari ◽  
Abbas Rajabifard

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) has the potential to provide much-needed information for emergency management stakeholders. However, stakeholders often lack scalability to identify useful and high-quality text content from the often-overwhelming amount of information. To solve this problem, most studies have concentrated on using text-related features in supervised learning models to classify text contents. This article proposes an assumption that the geographic attributes of VGI can be integrated into the model as features for enhancing the model's performance. To evaluate this assumption, the authors developed a case study based on VGI collected from two flooding events in Brisbane. They validated the accuracy of associated geographic coordinates and defined the geographic features relevant to the flood phenomenon. From their experiments, model based on this integrated method can have better performance in comparison with the model trained from the text-related features. The results suggest great potential for using the integrated method to harvest useful VGI for the needs of disaster management.


Author(s):  
Carla Melo ◽  
Greg Richards ◽  
Melanie Kay Smith

Transformational tourism is an emergent research field, reflecting a broader paradigm shift that encompasses changes in tourist profiles that challenge tourism businesses to deliver experiences that meet the expectations of tourists seeking opportunities for self-development and inner transformation. This chapter presents the outcomes of a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS) exploring how service providers are communicating transformational tourism experiences online. The findings reveal that the place where the experiences are delivered and the experience characteristics are frequently emphasised, which reinforces their relevance in the process of tourist transformation. Contents addressing the transformation process and the needs of the tourist can also be found. Based on these findings and the literature review, research implications are discussed, and future research directions are presented.


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