Improving Disaster Responsiveness using a Mix of Social Media and e-Government

Data sharing is essential for government agencies during disaster management as it requires high collaborative efforts among various organizations. Recently, social media have been increasingly used during the disasters for disseminating and receiving information to and from the public. By using social media for communications, the government can receive real-time data from the public and from organizations. The challenge lies in how to combine social media with government data, which is gathered from multiple sources, in multiple formats using multiple terminologies. This paper focuses on how to manage, integrate, and verify data acquired from multiple sources. The proposed model was designed by using frame-based data collection and ontology-based data integration, combined with the effective use of dynamic data from social media, with the aim of improving the disaster assistance.