The establishment of novel information and communications technologies, such as social media, has changed how individuals and organizations behave. Particularly during uncertain situations caused by natural or man-made disasters, people communicate and share information via social media. Emergency services could use published content of social media participants for an early detection of crisis situations and thus enhance crisis management. However, exploiting these information bears several challenges. To gain insights from large amounts of unstructured data in time-critical situations, emergency services are in the need of tools that enable them to gather, process, and analyze relevant information. In this research article, we follow the design science paradigm and propose a concept (artifact) of an early crisis detection tool. Based on expert interviews, design implications for the concept tool are derived. In addition, we conducted a design thinking workshop to evaluate the artifact, highlighting its practical relevance and usability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The continuous development of new technologies in recent years has changed our \u00a0everyday lives profoundly. Mobile technologies and embedded computing devices, as \u00a0well as network and communication services, such as Facebook and Twitter, have \u00a0changed the way how people communicate and share information with others [1]. \u00a0Social media has become an important medium in particular during disaster situations \u00a0[2, 3]. There is a growing consensus about the fact that social media can be valuable for emergency services in all disaster phases [4\u20137]. But other than the use of social media in crisis response, only little is known about the use of social media for \u00a0Emergency Management Agencies (EMAs) in the early detection of a crisis [4\u20136]. By having the knowledge of how to detect a crisis and how to gather these data in time-critical events, unleash the potential to minimize the damages and possibly save lives. \u00a0Furthermore, regarding the massive amount of unstructured data available in social media, it becomes apparent, that EMAs need technological tools to support crisis management efforts by automatically collecting, aggregating and visualizing important information [8]. Regarding existing tools intended to solve these challenges, [9] reported that the state of the art in the field of social media-based crisis management systems comprises a multitude of heterogeneous, domain-specific solutions instead of general applicable, modular and flexible tools. Thus, the design of a concept for a comprehensive crisis detection tool, deployable in the control center of EMAs, is one major research aim of this work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To reach the mentioned research aim of developing an innovative IT artifact in \u00a0form of a concept for an early crisis detection tool, we seek to address the following \u00a0general question. How can Twitter data be used for an early crisis detection tool? \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n First, we investigated which Twitter data can serve as indicators to early detect a \u00a0crisis. Second, we studied the design of an early crisis detection tool, by investigating which features the tool should comprise for processing, analyzing and visualizing the \u00a0gathered data. Hence, this work starts with the research design following the design \u00a0science approach [10]. The design science research methodology (DRSM) by [11] is \u00a0further used for structuring this paper. Accordingly, an unsolved problem will be identified and the motivation to close the defined research gap will be presented. \u00a0Afterwards, the objectives of the newly designed IT artifact indented to solve the \u00a0identified problems, will be defined. To assess the state-of-the-art of current literature \u00a0as well as practical demands, the chosen research methods are a literature research \u00a0and expert interviews. Based on the results, the design and development of the tool \u00a0will be described. In a further step, the tool will be demonstrated and evaluated by \u00a0experts in the field of crisis management during a design thinking workshop and in a second step during a test scenario including three participants testing the tool in a \u00a0two-day period in the emergency management context. Last, we discuss the results \u00a0and point out relevant aspects for further research.<\/p>\nYour downloads<\/h2>