iSAR+ (Online and Mobile Communications for Crisis Response and Search and Rescue) is a cyber-intelligence project funded by EC FP7. It aims to develop a platform which allows citizens to actively participate in the crisis response efforts thanks to social media, Internet, smartphone technologies coupled with advanced information extraction capabilities as those allowed by text mining. Among the project partners: law enforcement organisations, large industrial groups and innovative SMEs.
Social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, etc.) and new communication devices such as camera phones, smartphones and tablet computers are changing the way people interact and learn, work and do politics. Social mining is the new discipline directed to collect and extract useful information from the massive and continuous information flow which is currently generated. One of the first and most urgent objective is to apply this approach in crisis management: citizens have become the in situ first sensors during emergencies, able to quickly exchange information with PPDR (Public Protection and Disaster Relief) operators. The potential added-value which can be provided to the response effort by new media is often disregarded, due to the fact that a timely and adequate situational awareness tool based on social media information is not yet available.
iSAR+ wants to contribute to solve this problem innovating the communication dynamics between citizens and PPDRs, allowing to:
- Use social media analysis to improve PPDRs’ situational awareness on one side and their capability to promptly inform citizens on the other;
- Exploit mobile platforms ubiquitous presence to efficiently collect and transmit information directly from/to the areas experiencing an emergency situation;
- Incorporate the consequent information flow into PPDRs platforms, thanks to the development of social mining software tools.
The ambitious overall project goal is to create guidelines and a technological platform that, respecting the EU legislation and concerns on privacy, takes into account the organisational, human, technological, legal and ethical dimensions to enable the incorporation of new media users in emergencies, crises, search and rescue situations.
For additional details visit the iSAR+ project website: http://isar.i112.eu
Documentation
iSAR+ flyer ENGiSAR+ Project Partners
Project funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7, grant agreement no. 312850)