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Using Non-authoritative Sources During Emergencies in Urban Areas

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Computational Approaches for Urban Environments

Part of the book series: Geotechnologies and the Environment ((GEOTECH,volume 13))

Abstract

During emergencies in urban areas, it is paramount to assess damage to people, property, and environment in order to coordinate relief operations and evacuations. Remote sensing has become the de facto standard for observing the Earth and its environment through the use of air-, space-, and ground-based sensors. These sensors collect massive amounts of dynamic and geographically distributed spatiotemporal data daily and are often used for disaster assessment, relief, and mitigation. However, despite the quantity of big data available, gaps are often present due to the specific limitations of the instruments or their carrier platforms. This chapter presents a novel approach to filling these gaps by using non-authoritative data including social media, news, tweets, and mobile phone data. Specifically, two applications are presented for transportation infrastructure assessment and emergency evacuation.

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Notes

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Acknowledgements

Work performed under this project has been partially supported by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology, US Department of Transportation award # RITARS-12-H-GMU (GMU #202717). DISCLAIMER: The views, opinions, findings and conclusions reflected in this presentation are the responsibility of the authors only and do not represent the official policy or position of the USDOT/OST-R, or any State or other entity.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. GeoInformatics and Earth Observation Laboratory (GEO), Department of Geography and Institute for CyberScience, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Emily Schnebele & Guido Cervone

  2. Department of Geography & Environmental Engineering, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, USA

    Christopher Oxendine

  3. Research Application Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA

    Guido Cervone

  4. Department of Civil & Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Celso M. Ferreira

  5. GeoInformatics and Earth Observation Laboratory (GEO), Department of Geography and Institute for CyberScience, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Nigel Waters

  6. The University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

    Nigel Waters

Authors
  1. Emily Schnebele
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  2. Christopher Oxendine
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  3. Guido Cervone
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  4. Celso M. Ferreira
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  5. Nigel Waters
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emily Schnebele .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Marco Helbich

  2. Institute of Geography, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Jamal Jokar Arsanjani

  3. Dept. of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA

    Michael Leitner

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Schnebele, E., Oxendine, C., Cervone, G., Ferreira, C.M., Waters, N. (2015). Using Non-authoritative Sources During Emergencies in Urban Areas. In: Helbich, M., Jokar Arsanjani, J., Leitner, M. (eds) Computational Approaches for Urban Environments. Geotechnologies and the Environment, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11469-9_14

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