Social media helping response in emergencies

Imagine a world where emergency services discover what is going on from social media. During a crisis, such as a flood, an earthquake or a terrorist attack, people are sharing more and more information on social media sites. Could emergency services extract valuable messages from these data?

The project EmerGent, managed by the Research Executive Agency (REA i) is trying to provide an answer to this question. The project, funded under FP7, aims at understanding the positive and negative impacts of social media in emergencies.

Wherever emergencies or crises occur, ad-hoc communities are built through existing social media channels. These communities are often not connected at all and/or are even dismissed by the emergency management services. A systematic research concerning the effective identification and integration of valuable and reliable information from social media into emergency management processes is needed.

The EmerGent project is examining and assessing the role played by the social media and its contribution during emergencies. In addition, the project intends to develop IT tools and Apps for smartphones to help and support not only citizens during a crisis but also the first responders (e.g. firefighters, police forces, medical personnel) in the assessment, detection and intervention during the different phases of an emergency or a critical situation.

EmerGent received EU funding of €3.3 million (out of a total cost of € 4 million) and is due to complete its work' during Spring 2017. The consortium, composed of 10 partners from seven different countries, constitutes a good and balanced mix of universities, SMEs and end-users.