1st Workshop on Social Media for Disaster Risk Management: Researchers meet Practitioners
European Commission priority on the ‘Green Deal’ agenda shows how Climate Change is becoming an International Global Issue. As it concerns Disaster Risk Management, climate change is directly related to increasing Natural Hazards in frequency and Magnitude.
Reducing risk means trying to prevent or protect or mitigate natural hazards, as stated in another pillar of the European Commission, such as ‘A Stronger EU in the world’.
JRC.E1 contributes with research, tools, and data to Copernicus Emergency Management Services (EMS) to offer prompt information for users’ decision-making. Some products are mature and efficient, among them forecasting systems and monitoring systems. E1 Unit can rely on Earth Observation data too.
Copernicus EMS have an excellent coordination network, yet there is still uncertainty and room for improvement. Copernicus satellite maps can give the best information available, but this information doesn’t always come as soon as responders would like. Sometimes forecasts are off of some kilometres or degrees or millimetres of rainfall per hour.
The advantage of citizen-generated information is that it is available 24/7/365 in real-time, all over the globe. People produce millions of data every day. We think Social Media can help the good causes as a global cognitive brain and the workshop provided many such examples. We believe that there is a need to unite and share efforts for making Social Media information as usable and practical as any other sensors or models.
At JRC, we have the privilege to work on the bridge between Researchers and Crisis Responders. Therefore, we can see what’s on both sides, and we know how difficult it is for both sides to give and receive directions.
That’s why we wanted to have this workshop. We hope to create a place for discussing how to leverage social media information, where participants could establish (or adopting) a common language. They need to know each other needs, capacities, timing and resources.
The main focus of the workshop is about:
- Finding a shared, well-framed set of goals for the use of social media in crisis management and at the same time set in motion a network of organizations that collaborate towards their achievement.
- Starting the pursuit of a series of best practices, cases, datasets to share with other researchers and practitioners in the field.
LORINI Valerio;
RUFOLO Paola;
2021-05-26
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC124963
978-92-76-37767-2 (online),
OP KJ-09-21-154-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC124963,
10.2760/477815 (online),
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