A new social media platform could help emergency personnel improve decision making and response actions in a time-sensitive manner during weather-related disasters. The Social Media Analytics and Reporting Toolkit (SMART) developed at Purdue University is now being tested as Hurricane Florence batters the U.S. East Coast.Researchers are testing technology that tracks social media to help first responders better monitor areas where hurricanes make landfall. Source: Purdue University

SMART allows first responders to monitor social media posts to find people in need of help. Users map, interactively explore and navigate large volumes of data, topics and anomalies that occur in real-time via social media networks such as Flickr, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.

Developed at the university’s Visual Analytics for Command, Control and Interoperability Environments Center, the system supports customization of message and keyword filters interactively and visually. This technology provides users with scalable and interactive social media analysis and visualization through topic extraction, a combination of filters, cluster examination and stream categorization. SMART provides real-time monitoring of social media channels, extraction of trending and abnormal topics, density-based spatial clustering at multiple spatial scales, message classification based on intention verbs and task-tailored interactive message categorization.

Other potential applications include monitoring traffic or assessing potential threats to schools or during major public events.