crowdsourcing technologies for disaster emergency response - the nepal earthquake case study

CrowdsourcingNepal Earthquake and Crowdsourcing

Research effortsConclusion

Crowdsourcing technologies for DisasterEmergency Response

The Nepal Earthquake Case Study

Michal Bodnar

East Asia Summit (EAS) workshop on ”Application of Space Information Technology inMajor Natural Disaster Monitoring and Assessment”

June 3, 2015

Michal Bodnar Crowdsourcing technologies for Disaster Emergency Response



Table of Contents

1 CrowdsourcingCrowdsourcing for Disaster Emergency Response

2 Nepal Earthquake and CrowdsourcingDisaster specificationCrowdsourcing efforts

3 Research efforts

4 Conclusion




Crowdsourcing for Disaster Emergency Response

Table of Contents



3 Research efforts

4 Conclusion





What is crowdsourcing?

DefinitionCrowdsourcing is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, orcontent by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, andespecially from an online community, rather than from traditionalemployees or suppliers.

Wikipedia





Examples of crowdsourcing projects

Wikipediaa

Zooniverseb

Kickstarterc

OpenStreetMap (talk about it later ...)many others ...

ahttps://www.wikipedia.org/bhttps://www.zooniverse.orgchttps://www.kickstarter.com/


https://www.wikipedia.org/

https://www.zooniverse.org

https://www.kickstarter.com/




Why crowdsourcing?

Benefitsmore people =⇒ more ideasmore people =⇒ different approaches to solve the problem,different point of viewminimizes the costsaves the time





How crowd can help in case of thedisaster?





Digital Humanitarians !





Digital Humanitarians

a unified name given to the volunteers all around the world groupedinto many different communities called V&TCc (Volunteer andTechnical Communities) who are in help in case of the disasterfirstly described by Dr. Patrick Meierrecently published book Digital Humanitarianscan be divided into different groups according to their usage:

1 Mapping associations2 Tagging associations3 Online crisis information platforms





Mapping associations

GoalTo map the world by the help of people all around the world. In case ofdisaster, focusing on the affected areas.

List of mapping associationsGIS Corpsa

MapActionb

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap (HOT OSM)c

International Network of CrisisMappers (Crisis Mappers Net)d

Standby Task Forcee

ahttp://www.giscorps.org/bhttp://www.mapaction.org/chttp://hotosm.org/dhttp://crisismappers.net/ehttp://standbytaskforce.ning.com/


http://www.giscorps.org/

http://www.mapaction.org/

http://crisismappers.net/

http://standbytaskforce.ning.com/




GIS Corps

founded in 2003 as an initiative of URISA (Urban and RegionalInformation Systems Association), one of professional associations ofGIS professionals in USAcoordinates short term, volunteer based GIS services tounderprivileged communitiesone of the main goals is to support humanitarian reliefroughly 2600 volunteer GIS professionals





MapAction

formed in 2004 in UK during the Indian Ocean tsunamivolunteer GIS-experts trained in disaster response who can bedeployed anywhere in the worldin case of a disaster, the team is gathered and directly deployed tothe disaster zonetheir main outputs are the maps of the disaster in different aspects





Humanitarian OpenStreetMap (HOT OSM)

OpenStreetMapa collaborative project to create a free editable map of the worldmotivation: restrictions on the availability of map information acrossmuch of the world and advents of inexpensive portable satellitenavigation devices”the Wikipedia of Maps”created in 2004 by Steve Coastcurrently over 2,000,000 contributors





Humanitarian OpenStreetMap (HOT OSM)

Humanitarian OSM (HOT OSM)applies the principle of open source and open data sharing tohumanitarian response and economic developmentthe idea was proved during the Haiti Earthquake in 2010in case of disaster, OSM Tasking Managers will publish the mappingtasks there will be need to work onit is a microtasking mapping (the area divided into small parts)volunteers work both remotely and locally





International Network of Crisis Mappers (Crisis MappersNet)

largest and most active international community of experts,practitioners, technologists, volunteers, researchers engaged at theintersections of humanitarian crises, new technology, crowdsourcingand crisis mapping.launched at the first ICCM by Dr. Patrick Meier and Dr. Jen Ziemke





Standby Task Force

volunteering organization providing real-time crisis mappingprovides training to the members to get them ready in case of thedeploymentfirstly launched at 2010 ICCM (International Conference on CrisisMapping)their products include live maps, situation reports, databases ofdifferent kinds of datamore than 1,000 volunteers from 70+ different countries





Tagging associations

GoalThe main goal is to tag/mark the piece of the information on themap/social media message/satellite image with a help from the crowd.

List of tagging associationsTomnoda

MicroMappersb

ahttp://www.tomnod.com/bhttp://micromappers.com/


http://www.tomnod.com/

http://micromappers.com/




Tomnod

crowdsourcing campaign to search through the images and tag thedamagemission: to utilize power of crowdsourcing to identify objects andplaces in satellite imagesfounded by Digital Globe, which also provides the high-resolutionimageryevery volunteer can freely access and look for the desired damagedobjects and tag with a relevant information





MicroMappers

a crowdsourcing platform to analyze tweets/pictures/aerial imagesoriginated in 2012 after the Typhoon Pablo struck the Philippinesa combination of a crowdsourcing and artificial intelligence (AIDR)created by QCRI (Qatar Computing Research Institute)products:

1 Text Clicker for Tweets2 Image Clicker for Pictures3 Aerial Clicker for Aerial Pictures





MicroMappers





Online crisis information platforms

GoalServes as an online repository of all the information connected to thedisaster.

List of online crisis information platformsUshahidia

CrisisCommonsb

Humanity Roadc

ahttp://www.ushahidi.com/bhttp://crisiscommons.org/chttp://humanityroad.org/


http://www.ushahidi.com/

http://crisiscommons.org/

http://humanityroad.org/




Ushahidi

open-source crowdsourcing crisis information platformcreated by volunteer citizen reporters and bloggers in Kenya as areaction to post-election violence in the country between 2007 and2008an online map where people can report any information about thedisaster via email, voicemail, SMS, Twitter, web forms, Youtube,Flickr, Skype and other social mediagained popularity in Haiti Earthquake 2010





CrisisCommons

founded in March 2009global community of volunteers working together to build and usetechnology tools to help respond to disastertheir main goal is to improve the use of open data





Humanity Road

founded in 2010a volunteer based charityin case of disaster, it monitors social mediaone example: a mobile application which allowed citizens to let theirloved know that they are OK by simply clicking a single buttonduring Haiti Earthquake in 2010





Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN)

most of the organizations mentioned before belong to the officialnetwork called Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN)network-of-networksgoal: to provide an interface between formal, professionalhumanitarian organizations and informal yet skilled-and-agilevolunteer & technical networks





Members of DHN





DHN Activation




Disaster specificationCrowdsourcing efforts

Table of Contents



3 Research efforts

4 Conclusion





Nepal Earthquake

SpecificationAt 11:56 local time on April 25, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struckNepalepicenter in Lamjung district (north-west) of Kathmandu (south ofChina border)





Nepal Earthquake

Figures (Situation Report from May 11)26 damaged hospitals14,541 classrooms destroyed, 9,182 classrooms damaged7,675 dead, 17,870 injured288,798 houses totally destroyed, 254,112 partially destroyed27 million cubic metres of debris need to be cleared423 million USD requested (10 % funded)





Nepal Earthquake





How did Digital Humanitariansreact?





Digital Humanitarians @ nepalearthquake

activated by UN-OCHAfirst time mentioned in the UN-OCHA situation report no. 5following communities involved:

Standby Task Force (SBTF) (MicroMappers as a tool)Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)TomnodKathmandu Living Lab (KLL) a

MapActionHumanity Road

ahttp://kathmandulivinglabs.org/


http://kathmandulivinglabs.org/




SBTF @ nepalearthquake

Descriptionactivated from 1200 UTC 25 April - 2200 UTC 6 May 2015given two tasks:

1 to create a map with relevant text and images from public datasources and place this on a map =⇒ responders have goodinformation when arriving to the country

2 to create an information resource for responders (3W (Who, Where,What)






Task 1 - MicroMappersusing MicroMappers platform, the volunteers all around the worldcould classify Twitter messages and images as wellthe messages were classified into three main categories:

Urgent NeedsInfrastructure DamageResponse Efforts

the images were classified as the following:No DamageMild DamageSevere Damage





Volunteers @ MicroMappers2803 volunteers involved234,727 images reviewed =⇒ 410 put to the map =⇒ ImageMap1

55,044 tweets reviewed =⇒ 219 put to the map =⇒ Tweet Map2

1http://maps.micromappers.org/2015/nepal/images/#close2http://maps.micromappers.org/2015/nepal/tweets/


http://maps.micromappers.org/2015/nepal/images/#close

http://maps.micromappers.org/2015/nepal/tweets/




Image Map @ MicroMappers





Twitter Map @ MicroMappers






Workflowdedicated Skype chat roomsGoogle Spreadsheet for different types of tasks5 main coordinatorsvolunteers divided into following teams:

1 Urgent needs and Offers of assistance2 Photo & Image collection3 Affected Areas4 Camp info5 3W (Who, What, Where)





HOT OSM @ nepalearthquake

Progress2182 OSM mappers (and growing ...)58,250 edits to highways (and growing ...)91,850 edits to buildings (and growing ...)

Dataformat: OSM , SHP or for offline navigationdaily updates of Central Nepal dataa (13 Thematic Layers)30 minutes updates made by Geofabrikb

ahttps://www.dropbox.com/s/dgjj1lypea93xbs/central-nepal-20150426-0049Z-shp.zip?dl=0

bhttp://labs.geofabrik.de/nepal/


https://www.dropbox.com/s/dgjj1lypea93xbs/central-nepal-20150426-0049Z-shp.zip?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dgjj1lypea93xbs/central-nepal-20150426-0049Z-shp.zip?dl=0

http://labs.geofabrik.de/nepal/




HOT OSM @ nepalearthquake





HOT OSM @ nepalearthquake - Mapped areas





Tomnod @ nepalearthquake

Descriptionthe volunteer could classify the damage assessment into thefollowing categories:

Damaged BuildingDamaged RoadMajor DestructionTent/Shelter

over 58,700 people helped tag earthquake damage5,222,428 map views21,734 tagged features with a CrowdRank higher or equal to 0.85Digital Globe imagery provided with free accessa

ahttp://www.digitalglobeblog.com/2015/04/29/digitalglobe-releases-preliminary-nepal-earthquake-crowdsourcing-results/


http://www.digitalglobeblog.com/2015/04/29/digitalglobe-releases-preliminary-nepal-earthquake-crowdsourcing-results/

http://www.digitalglobeblog.com/2015/04/29/digitalglobe-releases-preliminary-nepal-earthquake-crowdsourcing-results/




Tomnod @ nepalearthquake - Damage Assessment Map





Kathmandu Living Labs (KLL) @ nepalearthquake

DescriptionV&TC in Nepalcrowdsourcing technology based on Ushahidi platformeveryone can post a report to the interactive mapa or send SMSwith the text in itcooperation with SBTF, HOT OSM, UN-OCHA, Nepal Army ...

ahttp://quakemap.org/main


http://quakemap.org/main




KLL @ nepalearthquake - Map





KLL @ nepalearthquake - Map

Statistics1141 reports officially submitted, divided into following categories:

Earthquake DamageVDC Trip SummariesPeople TrappedMissing PersonBlocked RoadsShelter AreaHelp WantedRecovery NeedsConflicting InformationOtherDistribution AreaResponding Organization





Final statistics

Over 60,000 volunteers being involved!

Nepal EarthquakeOrganization Data type FormatSBTF Live maps ArcGIS online map

3W report PDFHOT-OSM 34 thematic layers SHPTomnod Damage assessment data SHPKLL Reports, Live map Ushahidi, CSVMap Action Maps PDF, paper basedHumanity Road Situation reports PDF

The above data is not the final version, the database is growing everyday. Current size is over 4 GB of Shapefile data.




Table of Contents



3 Research efforts

4 Conclusion




Nepal Earthquake case study - further steps

Main questions1 Could the crowdsourced data (partially) subsitute governmental data

during disaster emergency?2 Up to what extent can we rely on them in terms of quality?3 What information content do they provide?4 In which way could be done a fusion of crowdsourced data and

official data?

Analysis1 Spatial and temporal analysis of the data.2 Analysis of crowdsourced data against data provided by

governmental institutions.3 Qualitative analysis of crowdsourced data.




Crowdsourcing for Disaster Emergency Response in China

Current situationsituation is different compared to other countriesreasons:

main social media streams (Facebook, Google, Twitter, ...) do notwork in China =⇒ most of the tools mentioned would not work inChina =⇒ need to be replaced by the local ones (WeChat, QQ,Weibo, ...)Chinese language as a barrier for a cooperation (personal experience)preference given to the data taken from the official institutions

What are we working on?in cooperation with NDRCC & Peking university, we are starting towork on creating a web platform based on Ushahidi that would serveas main disaster-related information platform (similar to KLL)Ludian Earthquake case study - analysis of crowdsourcing efforts ofChinese citizens




Table of Contents



3 Research efforts

4 Conclusion




Conclusion

Why crowdsourcing?crowdsourcing (almost) always produces open datamost of the times, response from crowdsourcing is much faster thanone made from the official/governmental organizations, which is themost important thing during the disaster emergencyusing volunteers minimizes the financial and human resourcesanyone anywhere can be of help with minimum special skills required(or fast additional training provided)




Conclusion

Drawbacksreliability and quality of the data providedhuge amount of crowdsourced data from different sources does notalways imply to useful information being providedlack of professional skills of the trained volunteers =⇒ usuallysuitable for easy tasks




Conclusion

Suggestionsshould be an initiative from ASEAN countries to create their localOpenStreetMap communitysee a big potential of using crowdsourcing technologies (mainlythose in usage of social media) in the countries like Malaysia orIndonesia where usage of social media and smartphones is verypopular (for instance, Jakarta has the highest number of tweets perday in the world)in case of disaster, do not hesitate to contact any of theorganizations mentioned to give a help




Thank you for your attention.


crowdsourcing technologies for disaster emergency response - the nepal earthquake case study

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