NICT Disaster Information Analysis System

Immediately after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the Internet was flooded by a huge amount of information concerning the damage and problems caused by the earthquake, the tsunami, and the nuclear disaster. Many reports about aid efforts and advice to victims were also transmitted into cyberspace. However, since most people were overwhelmed by the massive amounts of information, they could not make proper decisions, and much confusion was caused. Furthermore, false rumors spread on the Internet and fanned such confusion. We demonstrate NICT’s prototype disaster information analysis system, which was designed to properly organize such a large amount of disaster-related information on social media during future large-scale disasters to help people understand the situation and make correct decisions. We are going to deploy it using a large-scale computer cluster in fiscal year 2014.