Social-Media aided Hyperlocal Help-Network Matching Routing during Emergencies

Dheeraj Kumar, Takahiro Yabe, Satish V. Ukkusuri Lyles

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Catering to the humanitarian needs of hurricane-affected residents is the most challenging part for the emergency management agencies. These agencies typically follow a centralized help disbursement model by collecting donations and disbursing them to the needful through their employees or registered volunteers. The time required to move goods and volunteers to the place of need poses a survival challenge to emergency hit residents especially during the initial few days after the emergency. We propose and design a social-media (specifically Twitter) aided hyperlocal help-network by utilizing the tweets to identify users who require help and those who are willing to provide it. We also analyze tweets related to road damage, traffic jam, etc. to sense the current state of road infrastructure. We propose to match the help seekers and those who are willing to help, taking into consideration their spatial proximity and then provide the fastest working route for the help-provider to reach the matched help-seeker. Numerical experiments performed on hurricane Sandy Twitter dataset shows the effectiveness of the proposed approach as we are able to satisfy the need of more than 80% of help-seekers by matching them to appropriate help-offerer within a 24-hour duration after posting the request for help tweet with a maximum travel distance of 10 km.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Big Data 2018
EditorsNaoki Abe, Huan Liu, Calton Pu, Xiaohua Hu, Nesreen Ahmed, Mu Qiao, Yang Song, Donald Kossmann, Bing Liu, Kisung Lee, Jiliang Tang, Jingrui He, Jeffrey Saltz
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages1606-1611
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781538650356
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2 2018
Event2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Big Data 2018 - Seattle, United States
Duration: Dec 10 2018Dec 13 2018

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Big Data 2018

Conference

Conference2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Big Data 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySeattle
Period12/10/1812/13/18

Keywords

  • Emergency humanitarian help
  • Hurricane
  • hy-perlocal help-network matchmaking
  • road closure
  • routing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Information Systems

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Social-Media aided Hyperlocal Help-Network Matching Routing during Emergencies'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this