Social web for disaster management SWDM workshop chairs' welcome

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the Second International Workshop on Social Web for Disaster Management (SWDM'13). This year's workshop continues its tradition of being the premier forum for presentation of research results and experience reports on leading edge issues of use of social Web in the disaster management processes. The objective of this workshop is to bridge the advances in the Web research community with the practical needs of disaster response professionals, delivering the next generation of Web-enabled disaster management systems. The call for papers attracted submissions from all over the world. The program committee accepted 8 papers that cover a variety of topics, including location and entity extraction from Twitter, as well as analysis techniques for generating insights from social Web. In addition, the program includes two keynote speeches. Our thanks to the authors, reviewers, and Program Committee members, whose enormous and vital service generated this program. We hope you enjoy the Second International Workshop on Social Web for Disaster Management and find the WWW 2013 Proceedings of use for your work now and your future projects and activities.