RAPID: Discovering Crises Within Crises - Real-Time Detection, Tracking and Visualization of Emergent Crises in Hurricanes

飓风是一种毁灭性的自然灾害。美国国家海洋和大气管理局气候预测中心的预报员预测，今年的飓风季节将高于正常水平。这一预测已经被证明是准确的，因为最近两次大规模和破坏性的飓风：飓风哈维和飓风厄玛。开发、完善和测试系统，以提高第一响应者和应急管理机构在飓风之前、期间和之后识别紧急危机的能力，这是迫在眉睫的，而且时间至关重要。本快速反应研究（Rapid）的研究目标是开发一个危机检测、跟踪和可视化系统。“哈维”和“厄玛”飓风之前、期间和之后收集的社交媒体数据将用于开发和回顾性验证该系统。这项研究的结果将通过在整体新出现的危机中精确定位极端危机区域，提高未来飓风和其他大规模自然灾害中紧急危机的检测、跟踪和可视化。这将在没有事先定义危机主题的情况下完成，以便能够发现在空间和时间上聚集的意外危机，从而可能挽救更多生命。它将进一步使第一响应者和应急管理机构对空间参照社会媒体在提高救灾工作效率方面可以发挥的作用有新的认识。研究结果和探测、跟踪和可视化系统将以介绍形式向沿海城市地区的应急人员传播，以展示该系统并鼓励在今后的热带气旋季节实施该系统。

Hurricanes are a devastating natural disaster. Forecasters at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center have predicted an above-normal hurricane season this year. This prediction is already proving accurate as evidenced by the two massive and devastating recent hurricanes: Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. It is urgent and time critical to develop, refine and test systems that can improve the ability of first responders and emergency management agencies to identify emergent crises before, during and after hurricanes. The research objective of this Rapid Response Research (RAPID) is to develop a crisis detection, tracking and visualization system. Social media data collected before, during and after Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma will be used to develop and retrospectively validate the system. The results of this research will improve the detection, tracking and visualization of emergent crises in hurricanes and other large scale natural disasters in the future by enabling the pinpointing of extreme crisis areas in the midst of an overall emerging crisis. This will be accomplished without prior definition of crisis topics to enable the detection of unexpected crises that are clustered in space and time, potentially leading to more lives saved. It will further provide first responder and emergency management agencies with a new understanding of the role spatially-referenced social media can play in increasing the effectiveness of disaster response efforts. The research findings and the detection, tracking and visualization system will be disseminated in presentations to emergency responders in coastal urban areas to demonstrate the system and encourage its implementation in future tropical cyclone seasons.