A TWITTER-INTEGRATED WEB SYSTEM TO AGGREGATE AND PROCESS EMERGENCY-RELATED DATA

A major challenge when encountering time-sensitive, information critical
emergencies is to source raw volunteered data from on-site public sources and
extract information which can enhance awareness on the emergency itself from a
geographical context. This research explores the use of Twitter in the emergency
domain by developing a Twitter-integrated web system capable of aggregating and
processing emergency-related tweet data. The objectives of the project are to collect
volunteered tweet data on emergencies by public citizen sources via the Twitter API,
process the data based on geo-location information and syntax into organized
informational entities relevant to an emergency, and subsequently deliver the
information on a map-like interface. The web system framework is targeted for use
by organizations which seek to transform volunteered emergency-related data
available on the Twitter platform into timely, useful emergency alerts which can
enhance situational awareness, and is intended to be accessible to the public through
a user-friendly web interface. Rapid Application Development (RAD) is the
methodology of choice for project development. The developed system has a system
usability scale score of 84.25, after results were tabulated from a usability survey on
20 respondents. Said system is best for use in emergencies where the transmission
timely, quantitative data is of paramount importance, and is a useful framework on
extracting and displaying useful emergency alerts with a geographical perspective
based on volunteered citizen Tweets. It is hoped that the project can ultimately
contribute to the existing domain of knowledge on social media-assisted emergency
applications.