SGER: WebTrack - Learning Geographical Movements of Social Networks through the Web

卡特里娜飓风扰乱了许多社交网络。超过150万人撤离新奥尔良。风暴过后，公司、学校和家庭在地理上分离，他们需要重新发现成员的位置。由救灾组织、新闻媒体、雇主和飓风幸存者在网上生成的新数据源“爆发”，帮助那些受风暴影响的人寻找他们的社会群体成员。该项目研究了利用网络上可用的各种信息源自动跟踪社交网络地理运动的方法。随着卡特里娜飓风过后时间的流逝，这些资源变得越来越难以获取；因此，第一步是迅速收集这些与卡特里娜有关的博客和论坛、幸存者数据库和网站。接下来，本项目探索新的链接分析技术，利用这些新的异构数据源来跟踪网络成员的地理运动，给出在中断之前有关社交网络的信息。这些新技术结合了先前在社会网络分析中的工作，基于对社会网络中成员或子图之间连接模式的研究，以及确定成员之间是否存在连接或链接的链接分析方法。该项目将产生一系列更广泛的影响。该项目将有助于收集和归档与卡特里娜飓风相关的高度易腐数据，这些数据将提供灾难的历史记录。由此产生的信息资源将允许研究人员访问一个广泛的数据集，以开发社会网络和灾难恢复方面的新研究。在这个项目中开发的新的链接分析将有助于将卡特里娜飓风受害者的社会网络重新连接任务自动化，并使我们更好地准备应对未来的灾害。该项目的网站（http://www.eecs.tulane.edu/tejada/katrina）提供了有关研究和结果的更多信息。

Hurricane Katrina disrupted many social networks. Over 1.5 million people evacuated New Orleans. Companies, schools, and families were geographically separated after the storm, and they needed to rediscover the locations of their members. A "burst" of new data sources, generated on the web by disaster relief organizations, news outlets, employers, and hurricane survivors, aided those affected by the storm in searching for members of their social groups. This project investigates methods to automate tracking the geographical movements of social networks using the variety of information sources available on the web. As more time passes from Hurricane Katrina, these sources become increasingly inaccessible; therefore, the first step is to quickly harvest these Katrina-related blogs and forums, survivor databases and websites. Next, this project explores new link analysis techniques that utilize these new heterogeneous data sources to track the geographical movement of the network members, given information about the social networks prior to the disruption. These new techniques combine previous work in social network analysis, based on the study of the patterns of connections between members or subgraphs in a social networks, and link analysis methods, which determine whether a connection or link exist between members. The project will result in a range of broader impacts. The project will aid in harvesting and archiving Hurricane Katrina-related highly perishable data that will provide a historical record of the disaster. The resulting information resource will allow researchers to access an extensive dataset to develop new research in social networks and disaster recovery. The new link analysis developed in this project will assist in automating the social network reconnection task for Hurricane Katrina victims and make us better prepared to handle future disasters. The project Web site (http://www.eecs.tulane.edu/tejada/katrina) provides access to more information about the research and the results.