#Londonsburning: Integrating Geographic Topical, and Social Information during Crisis

Social media, such as microblogging, is a potentially powerful medium through which the city and its citizens can connect, particularly during times of crisis or extreme events. Yet neither the city nor its citizens are monolithic entities. We propose methods to integrate geographic, topical, and social information and behavior to improve situational understanding throughout the city, and enable more effective public and official response. We demonstrate this approach using Twitter data from the 2011 London riots. Overview and Approach This paper will examine the use of Twitter, a microblogging service, during one of the most tumultuous and violent periods in the recent history of one of the major capital cites of the world, London. In August 2011, London was rocked by a series of riots. The riots included mass looting and widespread arson. These events led to five deaths, hundreds of injuries, thousands of arrests, and over one hundred million pounds of damage in the city. The rioting spread to other major urban areas in England, including Manchester. Data from social media collected during these events provides an unparalleled opportunity to examine the London riots from the perspective of the citizen in the midst of these events. We analyze Twitter data from a collection of over 14 million tweets from London for the time period of the riots and their immediate aftermath, as well as other publically available data. We hypothesize that although the Copyright © 201 , Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. riots were a powerful, riveting event throughout the entire city, examining social media can illuminate finer distinctions in the behavior of its citizens that can aid in understanding patterns of response to these events. The integration of the information and methods discussed in this paper can help develop geographically based situational understanding of the riots within the city, and can provide insight into the networks and individual citizens who responded. Local authorities within an urban area could use these insights to engage with their citizenry more effectively and to more accurately assess how their citizens perceive them. The citizens of a city may be well positioned to detect early indications of an event or provide updates, to assist with preparations for an impending event, to help prevent or minimize damage, and to support recovery (Starbird et al. 2010) (Vieweg et al. 2010). The role of the citizen, empowered by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) such as microblogs will continue to evolve as technologies develop, and both citizens and authorities become more sophisticated in using these technologies during disasters or other emergency events (Palen, et al. 2009), (Jaeger et al. 2007). London is known as a city with a relatively high rate of Twitter usage, and government entities such as the London Local Authorities (or Boroughs) have adopted Twitter as well (Panagiotopoulos and Sams 2011) to communicate with their residents. Thus, examining Twitter usage during the London riots is appropriate. In order to better understand the city in a time of crisis or other disruptive event, social media activity relating to the event must be identified from within the larger stream. We describe an approach for doing so, leveraging the TwitTopical, and Social Information during Crisis