E2mC ::: Final Review and Social Media based Hot Spot Maps

E2mC Final Review: Social Media Real-time Hot Spot Maps of Natural Disasters and their Applications

The final review meeting of the Evolution of Emergency Copernicus services (E2mC) project together with the last E2mC user workshop took place in Geneva, Switzerland from 13 to 14 June 2019. The presented use cases by the E2mC consortium to the project officers led to discussions about the concrete exploitation of the impressive results – for instance, an integration into the existing Emergency Management Service (EMS). Additionally, the following user workshop showed the interest of a wide variety of stakeholders from different ecosystems (humanitarian, satellite mapping, or emergency management) in the project.

Particularly the real-time use cases Hurricane Michael and Florence showed the potential of the various modules of the new “Witness” component created in the E2mC project. For example, the social media based geospatial-semantic analysis module developed by the team of University of Salzburg produced hot spot maps within a day after the landfall of the hurricanes (s. figure below), supporting emergency services to delineate the affected areas. During hurricane Florence the team created further hot spot maps that show the temporal development of the disaster, allowing for more accurate predictions.

Due to its modular nature, the Witness component can be integrated into Copernicus EMS but also in other systems that monitor events for humanitarian aid.