Leveraging Geospatially-Oriented Social Media Communications in Disaster Response

Geospatially-oriented social media communications have emerged as a common information resource to support crisis management. Our research compares the capabilities of two popular systems used to collect and visualize such information Project Epic’s Tweak the Tweet (TtT) and Ushahidi. Our research uses geospatially-oriented social media gathered by both projects during recent disasters to compare and contrast the frequency, content, and location components of contributed information to both systems. We compare how data was gathered and filtered, how spatial information was extracted and mapped, and the mechanisms by which the resulting synthesized information was shared with response and recovery organizations. In addition, we categorize the degree to which each platform in each disaster led to actions by first responders and emergency managers. Based on the results of our comparisons we identify key design considerations for future social media mapping tools to support crisis management.