Big Data in Emergency Management: Exploitation Techniques for Social and Mobile Data

The term emergency management can be defined as the organization and manage- ment of resources and responsibilities for dealing with all humanitarian aspects of emergencies or disasters, in particular preparedness, response, and recovery in order to lessen the impact of disasters. Earthquakes, floods, terrorist acts, and catastrophic infrastructure failures are events that cause huge physical destruction, loss of life and property around the world. The frequency, intensity, and impact of catastrophic events have significantly increased in recent decades. Faced with such events, public authorities have recognized emergency response and disaster management as major concerns in need of concerted efforts, in collaboration with business and academia. The emergence of extremely large and complex datasets (i.e., big data) made it possible to utilize advanced techniques to reveal patterns, trends, and associations. Data-driven emergency rescue and response have been efficiently applied in several recent hazardous events.