How the U.S. Coast Guard Can Leverage Social Media and Enhanced Cell Phone Data to Improve Emergency Response
Abstract
Organizations responding to disasters and other emergencies need to know rapidly how to locate affected areas and individuals and to allocate response resources accordingly. Given this, situational awareness is crucial for effective disaster response operations. In the modern communication environment, cell phones and social media can offer valuable information in emergency response operations, such as search and rescue and disaster relief. Yet effectively using these media for situational awareness remains challenging. For the Coast Guard, using response teams to monitor social media feeds can be labor-intensive, and the sheer volume of social media posts hampers seeing all the relevant information. Furthermore, large amounts of data can be gathered from social media, which then must be organized, processed, and frequently integrated with data from other sources, such as environmental sensors or satellite data. Organizations in charge of disaster response might lack mechanisms to process and integrate large amounts of data effectively. In addition, calls from cell phones often lack location information that would help responders target rescue or other response efforts.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2019
- Accession Number
- AD1095532
Entities
People
- Aaron C. Davenport
- Colleen M. Mccullough
- Douglas Yeung
- Emily Hoch
- Kelly Klima
- Sarah Nowak
- Sohaela Amiri