D5.2 Design of Information Routing to Emergency Services and Citizens

Authors

Massimo Cristaldi, Federico Sangiorgio, Federica Toscano, Thomas Ludwig, Matthias Moi

Abstract

Information Routing in EmerGent represents an important concept to link social media (and  therefore  citizens) to ES. To reach this aim EmerGent will be conceptually placed between social media and ES C&C systems performing a mediator role in social media oriented C2A and A2C communications. To do that a mechanism is needed to forward and address all incoming messages produced by EmerGent Subsystems (like data mining, mobile applications, etc.) as well as by ES to the correct recipients. The technological components in charge of forwarding messages and addressing them to the right recipients are part of the “Routing  Subsystem”. The Routing Subystem will permit to address alerting messages created by EmerGent (coming  from  the intelligence analysis of social messages collected) to ES (C2A). On the A2C side, the Routing Subsystem will be used by ES to send emergency messagesmanaged by them and publish informationon social media exploiting EmerGent functionalities. The design of the Routing Subsystem takes into account alerting and emergency data exchange standards (such as CAP and other data formats belonging to the EDXL family of standards) and efforts produced by other EU projects, like REACT (Ref. EmerGent Description of Work) and IDIRA [WWW16]. The aim is to develop communication interfaces that will make easier the integration of existing C&C systems adopted by ES with EmerGent and therefore with the social media world. The Routing Subsystem will be the contact point between ES C&C systems and EmerGent.

Purpose of the Document

This Deliverable contributes to Objective O2 of EmerGent: to show the positive impact of information mining, information quality, information gathering and information routing for social media in emergencies. In particular, the information routing concepts aim at reasonable distribution of information in order to avoid information overload, that often makes the handling of the emergency situation more complicated. To achieve this objective, a set of routing rules for providing relevant information to the correct users and recipients have been identified. These routing rules take into account geography, language, and other criteria to understand the relevance and pertinence of the considered information for the potential addressee.