III: Small: Collaborative Research: Summarizing Heterogeneous Crowdsourced & Web Streams Using Uncertain Concept Graphs

对移动的和网络技术的无处不在的访问使公众能够随时随地共享有关其周围环境的有价值的信息。例如，在紧急情况或危机期间，人们通过社交媒体报告受影响地区的需求，以替代传统的911电话。这对一系列紧急服务官员来说可能是有价值的信息。然而，由于这些数据是在真实的时间内生成的，是异构的、高度非结构化的、冗余的，并且有时是不可靠的，因此这些数据的利用带来了若干计算挑战。该项目在两个具体方向上进行创新，以缓解紧急情况下与大型流数据集相关的挑战：（1）本项目研究新的摘要方法，以真实的时间处理来自多个Web源的嘈杂的非结构化数据流，同时考虑不可信信息的可能性，以便它们可以以结构化和机器可读的格式输入公共服务的决策支持系统。(2)该项目开发并验证了强大的决策支持系统，用于根据结构化摘要报告向所需领域分配关键资源。评估计划包括与应急人员及其所服务的社区的合作。这项研究的更广泛影响包括设计一种通用方法，从网络上的大数据流中提取、整合和总结结构化信息，以帮助未来智慧城市的公共服务。研究小组计划在应急响应演习期间与开源系统共享模拟数据集，以提供实时决策支持。这可以帮助劳动力培训，也有助于设计新颖的数据科学教育项目，以造福社会。正式地说，本研究项目调查了一种称为不确定概念图的新型知识表示背后的理论。该图包含基于应用领域的关键概念的异构节点（例如，区域、事件和灾难期间的信息源）。该图具有连接这些概念节点的异构边，基于使用从数据流（例如，Twitter和新闻来源）。图的结构会随着时间的推移而演变，节点和边都可以添加、删除或更新。一个等价的贝叶斯网络是从不确定概念图中导出的，描述了在给定的时间实例中图中捕获的事件之间的依赖关系。基于图状态中的关系边和构造的贝叶斯网络，创建动作推荐系统以支持应用领域任务（例如，向特定事故区域派遣救护车资源）。为了确保鲁棒性，本项目开发并验证了一种新的异常识别和诊断方法，该方法使用模式相似度来评估不确定概念图中概念节点及其关系的当前状态的正确性。研究团队使用最近灾害的历史数据集来构建图形，并开发一个用于域评估的演示系统，以便为城市应急服务提供应急响应的建议。研究者们在各自的课程大纲中总结了经验教训和方法论。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Ubiquitous access to mobile and web technologies enables the public to share valuable information about their surroundings anywhere and anytime. For example, during an emergency or crisis people report needs from affected areas via social media as an alternative to the traditional 911 calls. This can be valuable information for a range of emergency service officials. However, the utilization of this data poses several computational challenges as it is generated in real time, is heterogeneous, highly unstructured, redundant, and sometimes unreliable. This project innovates in two specific directions to alleviate the challenges associated with large, streaming datasets during emergencies: (1) The project investigates new summarization approaches to handle noisy, unstructured data streams from multiple web sources in real time while accounting for the possibility of untrustworthy information, so that they can be fed into decision support systems of public services in a structured and machine-readable format. (2) The project develops and validates robust decision support systems for allocating critical resources to needed areas based on the structured summary reports. The evaluation plan includes collaboration with emergency responders and the communities they serve. The broader impacts of this research include the design of a generic methodology to extract, integrate, and summarize structured information from big data streams on the web for helping public services of future smart cities. The research team plans to share simulated datasets with an open source system for real-time decision support during emergency response exercises. This can assist in workforce training and also, help design novel educational projects of data science for social good.Formally, this research project investigates the theories behind a novel knowledge representation called Uncertain Concept Graph. The graph contains heterogeneous nodes based on key concepts of an application domain (e.g., regions, incidents, and information sources during a disaster). The graph has heterogeneous edges connecting these concept nodes, based on the inference of concept relationships using the extracted information from data streams (e.g., Twitter and news sources). The structure of the graph evolves over time and both nodes and edges can be added, deleted, or updated. An equivalent Bayesian Network is derived from the Uncertain Concept Graph describing the dependencies between the events captured in the graph at a given time instance. Based on the relationship edges in a graph state and the constructed Bayesian Network, an action recommendation system is created to support an application domain task (e.g., dispatching ambulance resources to incident-specific regions). To ensure robustness, this project develops and validates a novel anomaly identification and diagnosis approach using mode similarity to assess the correctness of current state of concept nodes and their relationships in the Uncertain Concept Graph at any time. The research team uses historical datasets of recent disasters to construct the graph and develop a demo system for domain evaluation, in order to recommend actions in emergency response for the city emergency services. The investigators are including the lessons learned and methodologies developed in their respective course curriculums.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.