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Along with climate change, more frequent extreme events, such as flooding and tropical cyclones, threaten the livelihoods and wellbeing of poor and vulnerable populations. One of the most immediate needs of people affected by a disaster is…
People post information about different topics which are in their active vocabulary over social media platforms (like Twitter, Facebook, PInterest and Google+). They follow each other and it is more likely that the person who posts…
Images shared on social media help crisis managers gain situational awareness and assess incurred damages, among other response tasks. As the volume and velocity of such content are typically high, real-time image classification has become…
Due to their often unexpected nature, natural and man-made disasters are difficult to monitor and detect for journalists and disaster management response teams. Journalists are increasingly relying on signals from social media to detect…
Natural disasters affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide every year. Early warning, humanitarian response and recovery mechanisms can be improved by using big data sources. Measuring the different dimensions of the impact of…
Recovering from crises, such as hurricanes or wildfires, is a complex process that can take weeks, months, or even decades to overcome. Crises have both acute (immediate) and chronic (long-term) effects on communities. Crisis informatics…
Microblogging platforms such as Twitter provide active communication channels during mass convergence and emergency events such as earthquakes, typhoons. During the sudden onset of a crisis situation, affected people post useful information…
Social media platforms provide active communication channels during mass convergence and emergency events such as disasters caused by natural hazards. As a result, first responders, decision makers, and the public can use this information…
The challenge of nowcasting and forecasting the effect of natural disasters (e.g. earthquakes, floods, hurricanes) on assets, people and society is of primary importance for assessing the ability of such systems to recover from extreme…
We use wireless voice-call and text-message volumes to quantify spatiotemporal communication patterns in the New York Metro area before, during, and after the Virginia earthquake and Hurricane Irene in 2011. The earthquake produces an…
Hurricanes are cyclones circulating about a defined center whose closed wind speeds exceed 75 mph originating over tropical and subtropical waters. At landfall, hurricanes can result in severe disasters. The accuracy of predicting their…
Fast and accurate prediction of hurricane evolution from genesis onwards is needed to reduce loss of life and enhance community resilience. In this work, a novel model development methodology for predicting storm trajectory is proposed…
The forecast of tropical cyclone trajectories is crucial for the protection of people and property. Although forecast dynamical models can provide high-precision short-term forecasts, they are computationally demanding, and current…
"Social sensing" is a form of crowd-sourcing that involves systematic analysis of digital communications to detect real-world events. Here we consider the use of social sensing for observing natural hazards. In particular, we present a case…
During recent years the online social networks (in particular Twitter) have become an important alternative information channel to traditional media during natural disasters, but the amount and diversity of messages poses the challenge of…
Mimicking human ability to forecast future positions or interpret complex interactions in urban scenarios, such as streets, shopping malls or squares, is essential to develop socially compliant robots or self-driving cars. Autonomous…
We study collective attention paid towards hurricanes through the lens of $n$-grams on Twitter, a social media platform with global reach. Using hurricane name mentions as a proxy for awareness, we find that the exogenous temporal dynamics…
This paper complements the large body of social sensing literature by developing means for augmenting sensing data with inference results that "fill-in" missing pieces. It specifically explores the synergy between (i) inference techniques…
Social media has enabled people to circulate information in a timely fashion, thus motivating people to post messages seeking help during crisis situations. These messages can contribute to the situational awareness of emergency responders,…
Hurricanes are costly natural disasters periodically faced by households in coastal and to some extent, inland areas. A detailed understanding of evacuation behavior is fundamental to the development of efficient emergency plans. Once a…