Towards Automated Situational Awareness Reporting for Disaster Management—A Case Study

Klaus Schwarz (), Daniel Arias Aranda and Michael Hartmann
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Klaus Schwarz: Berlin School of Technology, SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences, 10587 Berlin, Germany
Daniel Arias Aranda: Department of Business and Economics, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain
Michael Hartmann: Berlin School of Technology, SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences, 10587 Berlin, Germany

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 10, 1-14

Abstract: Disasters do not follow a predictable timetable. Rapid situational awareness is essential for disaster management. People witnessing a disaster in the same area and beyond often use social media to report, inform, summarize, update, or warn each other. These warnings and recommendations are faster than traditional news and mainstream media. However, due to the massive amount of raw and unfiltered information, the data cannot be managed by humans in time. Automated situational awareness reporting could significantly and sustainably improve disaster management and save lives by quickly filtering, detecting, and summarizing important information. In this work, we aim to provide a novel approach towards automated situational awareness reporting using microblogging data through event detection and summarization. Therefore, we combine an event detection algorithm with different summarization libraries. We test the proposed approach against data from the Russo-Ukrainian war to evaluate its real-time capabilities and determine how many of the events that occurred could be highlighted. The results reveal that the proposed approach can outline significant events. Further research can be carried out to improve short-text summarization and filtering.

Keywords: disaster management; automated reporting; sustainability in disaster management; situational awareness reporting; microblogging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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