Information Refinement Technologies for Crisis Informatics: User Expectations and Design Principles for Social Media and Mobile Apps

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Abstract
Zusammenfassung
My Contribution
Publications of the Author
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
Part I Outline
1 Introduction
1.1 Motivation
1.2 Aims and Objectives
1.3 Structure of the Work
2 Related Work
2.1 Foundations and Terms of Crisis Management
2.2 Research Domain and Technologies of Crisis Informatics
2.3 Adoption of Social Media Analytics in Crisis Informatics
2.4 Towards Information Refinement in Crisis Informatics
2.5 Research Gaps and Potentials
3 Research Design
3.1 Research Field and Foundations
3.2 Research Approach
3.3 Research Context
3.4 Methods
3.4.1 Theoretical Review
3.4.2 Empirical Pre-Study
3.4.3 Design of Artefacts
3.4.4 Evaluation
Part II Theoretical and Empirical Findings
4 Retrospective Review and Future Directions for Crisis Informatics
4.1 Introduction and Brief History
4.2 Published Cases of Social Media in Emergencies
4.3 Usage Patterns—Types of Interaction in Social Media
4.3.1 Citizens to Citizens (C2C)—Self-Coordination and Help
4.3.2 Authorities to Citizens (A2C)—Crisis Communication and Public Alerting
4.3.3 Citizens to Authorities (C2A)—Integration of Citizen-Generated Content
4.3.4 Authorities to Authorities (A2A)—Inter- and Intra-Organizational Crisis Management
4.4 Role Patterns—Types of Users in Social Media
4.4.1 Citizens; or Public Perspective
4.4.2 Authorities; or Organizational Perspective
4.4.3 Towards a Classification of Roles Related to Social Media Use
4.5 Perception Patterns—Views on Social Media
4.5.1 Authorities’ Perception of Social Media
4.5.2 Citizens’ Perception on Social Media
4.5.3 Towards Comprehensive Perception Patterns
4.6 The Past and the Future: Discussion and Conclusion
4.6.1 Achievements of 15 Years of Research
4.6.2 Future Practice and Research Potentials
5 Survey on Media Perception and Use During Infrastructure Failure
5.1 Introduction
5.2 State of the Art
5.2.1 Characteristics of Socio-technical Critical Infrastructures
5.2.2 Crisis Communication and Requirements for ICT
5.2.3 Research Gap
5.3 Methodology
5.3.1 Study Participants
5.3.2 Data Analysis
5.4 Results
5.4.1 Media Usage During Crises
5.4.2 Expectations Towards Critical Infrastructure Operators in Crises
5.4.3 Measures During an Emergency Call Failure
5.4.4 Anticipated Behaviour in Crisis Situations
5.5 Discussion and Conclusion
5.6 Appendix: Survey Questions
6 Survey on Citizens’ Perception and Use of Social Media
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Perception of the Use of Social Media in Emergencies
6.2.1 Citizens’ Perception of Social Media
6.2.2 Research Gap
6.3 Methodology
6.3.1 Survey Design
6.3.2 Characteristics of Survey Participants
6.3.3 Quantitative Analysis
6.3.4 Qualitative Analysis
6.4 Empirical Results
6.4.1 Use of Social Media in Emergencies (Q2+Q3): More Searching, Less Sharing
6.4.2 Expectations (Q4): Emergency Services Should Monitor Social Media
6.4.3 Barriers (Q5): False Rumours
6.4.4 Emergency Apps (Q6–8): Used by One Out of Six
6.4.5 Open Comments (Q9): Benefits, Information Flow, Applications Fields, Inexperience, Scepticism
6.5 Discussion and Conclusion
6.5.1 The Perception of Social Media in Emergencies by Citizens’ in Germany
6.5.2 Directions for Future Research
6.5.3 Relationship With Prior Work
6.6 Limitations
6.7 Appendix: Survey Questions
7 Survey on the Adoption, Use and Diffusion of Crisis Apps
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Background and Related Work
7.2.1 Citizens’ Information Demand During Crises
7.2.2 ICT and Apps for Crisis Management
7.2.3 Research Gap
7.3 Representative Study: Methodology
7.3.1 Characteristics of Survey Participants
7.3.2 Data Analysis
7.4 Results
7.4.1 Distributions of Crisis App Usage: Little Awareness and Interest
7.4.2 Attitudes Towards Crisis Apps: Low Effort, High Functionality
7.4.3 Reasons for (Non-)Usage of Crisis Apps: Ignorance Is the Primary Issue
7.5 Discussion and Conclusion
7.5.1 Main Results
7.5.2 Implications of Our Findings
7.5.3 Limitations and Outlook
Part III Design and Evaluation Findings
8 Design and Evaluation of Social Media Guidelines for Citizens
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Related Work: Challenges of Social Media in Emergencies and Existing Guidelines
8.2.1 Use and Challenges of Social Media in Emergencies
8.2.2 Existing Guidelines for the Use of Social Media
8.2.3 Research Gap and Objective
8.3 Methodology
8.3.1 Designs of Citizens’ Guidelines
8.3.2 Evaluation of the Citizens’ Guidelines
8.4 Results
8.4.1 Importance of Individual Recommendations of the Guidelines
8.4.2 Influencing Factors on the Attitude towards the Guidelines
8.4.3 Citizens’ Attitudes and Suggestions concerning the Guidelines
8.5 Discussion and Conclusion
8.6 Appendix: Visualization of the Guidelines
8.7 Appendix: Correlations between Responses for all Guidelines
9 Design and Evaluation of a Cross Social Media Alerting System
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Conceptual Framing and Related Work
9.2.1 Crisis Communication Perspective: The Authorities’ Challenges of Information Overload, Quality and Communication in Emergencies
9.2.2 Social Media Analytics Perspective: Suitability of Existing Systems for the Authorities’ Use in Emergencies
9.2.3 Social Media Analytics Systems for Event Detection and Alert Generation
9.2.4 Research Gap
9.3 Requirements Analysis: Methodology, Pre-Studies and Workshops
9.4 Development and Architecture of a Cross-Platform Social Media Based Alerting System
9.4.1 The Backend: Grouping Messages to Alerts
9.4.2 The Front-end: Visualisation of Alerts
9.5 Methodology of the Systems’ Evaluation
9.5.1 Live & Paper-based Demonstrations (2017)
9.5.2 Workshop Exercise (2017)
9.5.3 Field Trials (2017)
9.6 Results of the Systems’ Evaluation
9.6.1 General Attitudes and Impressions (Q1)
9.6.2 Social Media Alerts (Q3)
9.6.3 Information Quality (Q4)
9.6.4 Importance and Usefulness of Functionality (Q2+Q5)
9.6.5 Additional Functionality (Q6)
9.7 Discussion
9.7.1 Information Quality and White-Box Algorithm Representation: Supporting the Subjectivity, Tailorability and Transparency of Filtering
9.7.2 Information Overload and Usable Configurability: Improving the Algorithmic Performance and Configurability of Social Media Alerts by Users
9.8 Conclusion
10 Design and Evaluation of an Active Relevance Classification System
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Literature Review
10.2.1 Method
10.2.2 Social Media in Disasters and Relevance Classification as Means to Mitigate Information Overload
10.2.3 Abstract and Precise Criteria for Relevance Classification
10.2.4 Machine Learning and Social Media Analytics for Relevance Classification
10.2.5 Research Gap
10.3 Technological Basis: Social Data Management and Analysis
10.3.1 Method
10.3.2 Overall Architecture
10.3.3 Backend: The Social Media Service
10.3.4 Frontend: The Social Media Observatory
10.4 Evaluation I: Relevance Classification via Batch Learning
10.4.1 Approach
10.4.2 Evaluation
10.5 Evaluation II: Relevance Classification via Active and Online Learning
10.5.1 Approach
10.5.2 Preliminary Evaluation
10.6 Discussion and Conclusion
10.6.1 Results
10.6.2 Practical Implications
10.6.3 Theoretical Contributions
10.6.4 Limitations and Future work
11 Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Crisis App
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Related Work and Comparison of Crisis Apps
11.2.1 Authorities’ Demand for Citizen-Generated Content (C2A)
11.2.2 Citizens’ Demand for Crisis Communication (A2C)
11.2.3 Crisis Apps and Contextual Factors for Bidirectional Communication
11.2.4 Research Gap
11.3 Development and Architecture of the Emergency Mobile App
11.3.1 Overall Methodology
11.3.2 Functionalities of the Emergency App
11.4 Evaluation of the Emergency Mobile App
11.4.1 Methodology
11.4.2 Results
11.5 Discussion and Conclusion
Part IV Conclusion and Outlook
12 Information Refinement Technologies for Crisis Response
12.1 Overview of the Information Refinement Framework
12.2 Event Perspective
12.2.1 Characteristics and Types of Crises
12.2.2 Information Use and Expectation in Different Phases of a Crisis
12.3 Organisational Perspective
12.3.1 Goals, Objective, Strategies and Tactics of Emergency Services
12.3.2 Persons, Roles and Cooperation With External Stakeholders
12.3.3 Perception and Challenges of Technology Adoption
12.4 Societal Perspective
12.4.1 Citizens’ Behaviour and Roles in the Digital Realm
12.4.2 Attitudes and Reported Use of Mobile Technologies and Social Media in Emergencies
12.4.3 Expectations Towards Authorities, Emergency Services, and Other Organisations
12.5 Technological Perspective
12.5.1 Channels: What Are relevant Channels to Fulfil Objectives?
12.5.2 Access: Which Data Is Available and How It Is Accessible?
12.5.3 Content: What Are Characteristics of Emergency Information?
12.5.4 Analysis: How Can Technology Assist in the Analysis of Information?
12.5.5 Filtering: How to Detect and Filter for the Relevant Information?
12.5.6 Evaluation: How Can the Results Inform My Decision and Action?
13 Conclusion and Future Work
13.1 Main Findings
13.2 Empirical and Theoretical Contributions
13.3 Design and Practical Contributions
13.4 Limitations and Future Work
References