Twitter-Based Safety Confirmation System for Disaster Situations
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- Victims should use the hashtag #救助 (meaning #Rescue) and describe accurate and detailed information, such as the requirements, pictures, address, and location on the tweet.
- When rescued, victims should report that they have been rescued and should immediately remove the rescue-request tweet that was previously posted.
2. Related Studies and Services
2.1. Safety Confirmation Services in Disaster Situations
2.2. Rescue Request Tweets Posted during Large-scale Disasters in Japan
2.3. Facilitation of Sharing Disaster-related Information
3. Proposed Application T-@npi
3.1. Requirements
- Social media adoption: The safety information of victims should be confirmed as quickly as possible after a disaster. The proposed system requires the use of social media such as Twitter for efficient information sharing.
- Facilitation of sending rescue requests: Victims needing to be rescued must provide detailed information and the coordinates of their location on a tweet, as instructed by @TwitterLifeline [19]. However, even people who are familiar with smartphones or similar devices and social media cannot easily provide such detailed information. Thus, the proposed system must be equipped with a function that sends rescue requests via an easy operation.
- Renewal and deletion of old information: As instructed in [19], users who sent a rescue request should remove the rescue-request tweet after the rescue, and then update their status (rescue or self-resolution of the emergency). To prevent the spreading of old information, the proposed system requires a reregistration function by which users can delete the previously posted rescue request and post the new information.
- Encouraging mutual and public help: Self-help, mutual help, and public help are important for disaster prevention and mitigation. The existing services can share a user’s safety information with families, relatives, and friends (i.e., self-help), but lack functions for sending and sharing rescue requests by victims in trouble (i.e., mutual and public help). To facilitate rescue and support activities, the safety information and rescue requests should be shared with local governments and rescue experts (enabling public help), and with neighbors of the victims. The needs of a large-scale disaster may exceed the capacity of local governments, firefighter rescue parties, and police officers, necessitating the assistance of neighbors (i.e., mutual help.) Thus, the proposed system must support both mutual and public help.
- GIS integration: The registered safety information and rescue requests must be mapped on an online map for decision making decisions by local governments and rescue experts.
3.2. Twitter Adoption
- Twitter is a widely used service. Consequently, most users are conversant with it, and thus, they can use the proposed application easily. Moreover, since users do not often use existing services such as 171 and web171, they are not familiar with using them, and this has been a bottleneck in regard to the acceptance of these applications. The application proposed in this paper addresses this problem.
- Although Twitter has been previously used for rescue requests and other information sharing, rescue requests are not supported by the existing services such as 171 and web171. Therefore, these services are limited to the communication of safety information only. The proposed system overcomes this limitation.
- The proposed system is inexpensive. As information is exchanged only on Twitter, the proposed system requires no large-scale hardware.
- The system administrators and operators do not need to maintain their individual information because all users are uniquely identified by their respective Twitter IDs.
- Unlike Facebook and LINE, Twitter is an open social media, meaning that the proposed application supports mutual and public help.
3.3. Assumed Users and Devices
- Sending user: A user who posts his or her safety information.
- Confirming user: A user who checks the safety information post of another individual. The confirming user is expected to “follow” the sending user on Twitter.
- Supporting user: A user such as a local government staff member who checks the safety information of a disaster-stricken area.User devices are assumed to be smartphones, tablet PCs, or general PCs.
3.4. System Outline
3.5. System Operation and Screens
3.5.1. Index Page
3.5.2. Registration of Safety Information
- Selection of rescue request (item (1) in Figure 4): The rescue-request item offers two options, “YES” (a rescue is needed) or “NO” (no rescue is needed). If the sender selects “YES,” the tweet to be posted includes the hashtag #救助 (#Rescue). If the user selects “NO,” the tweet to be posted includes “Rescue is not needed”.
- Additional comment (item (3) in Figure 4): The sending user can enter a comment of up to 40 characters.
- Current location of the user (item (4) in Figure 4): The location information (latitude and longitude information) of the sending user is obtained by global positioning and geolocation systems and is called by JavaScript. This information is transformed into an address by a reverse geocoding service [46]. In the current version of the proposed system, address transformation is available only in Japan. When a user selects the “はい (Yes)” button for the query “現在地も合わせて送信しますか (Do you send your current location information together?),” the user’s address is sent together with the safety information. Otherwise, the address is registered as “N/A.” If the sending user’s device cannot detect the location or the user does not want to provide the location information, the address is also registered as “N/A”.
3.5.3. Reregistration of Safety Information
3.5.4. Confirmation of Safety Information
3.5.5. List and Map view for Supporting Users
3.6. Operational Test for Registration of Safety Information
- It would be useful if I could check people who have found my information. (IT)
- The web application (accessed by web browsers) is time-consuming compared with a native application. This should be improved. (IT)
- To popularize the system, the application should collaborate with other popular applications used in ordinary times. (BA)
- The system should additionally collaborate with SNSs other than Twitter. (BA)
- The application may be abused because we can post anonymously. (BA)
4. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Location Submitted | Yes | No | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Rescue needed | Yes | No/No longer | No longer | No | Any |
Injured/damaged checked | Any | Yes | No | No | Any |
Background color on the table entry | |||||
Icon on the map | Not displayed |
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Utsu, K.; Abe, M.; Nishikawa, S.; Uchida, O. Twitter-Based Safety Confirmation System for Disaster Situations. Future Internet 2020, 12, 14. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi12010014
Utsu K, Abe M, Nishikawa S, Uchida O. Twitter-Based Safety Confirmation System for Disaster Situations. Future Internet. 2020; 12(1):14. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi12010014
Chicago/Turabian StyleUtsu, Keisuke, Mariko Abe, Shuji Nishikawa, and Osamu Uchida. 2020. "Twitter-Based Safety Confirmation System for Disaster Situations" Future Internet 12, no. 1: 14. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi12010014