Identifying Actionable Information on Social Media for Emergency Dispatch

Abstract : Crisis informatics researchers have taken great interest in methods to identify information relevant to crisis events posted by digital bystanders on social media. This work codifies the information needs of emergency dispatchers and first responders as a method to identify actionable information on social media. Through a design workshop with public safety professionals at a Public-Safety Answering Point (PSAP) in the United States, we develop a set of information requirements that must be satisfied to dispatch first responders and meet their immediate situational awareness needs. We then present a manual coding scheme to identify information satisfying these requirements in social media posts and apply this scheme to fictitious tweets professionals propose as actionable information to better assess ways that this information may be communicated. Finally, we propose automated methods from previous literature in the field that can be used to implement these methods in the future.