Crowdsourcing for Emergency Response

In the past decade the importance of social networks and mobile technologies has been growing rapidly. The convenience, ease of use and affordability of handheld devices have caused an unprecedented increase in Internet connectivity across all age and social groups in various sectors of our lives, including emergency services. An ongoing movement among crisis management organizations is the incorporation of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 tools into their practices for the improvement of their critical situations response. Simultaneously, the level of trust in the capabilities, safety and reliability of social networks demonstrated by the general public has been growing equally quickly. As a result, social media is becoming a ubiquitous part of the process of disaster management. In this paper, we provide a detailed discussion on how social media are rapidly overtaking traditional methods for emergency response and review current ideas, examples and trends for the usage of online services for disaster control and the seamless transition between platforms and device types.