Crowdsourcing the Crisis

The United States Department of Defense funded a research project at the University of Virginia to increase community resilience after a crisis (e.g., natural disaster, bioterrorism attack). The premise is that the public would be better served if it had access to reliable, near real-time information concerning the “ground truth” (actual observations and pictures) of unfolding events. One way (of many) to collect those reports is through crowdsourcing. By taking advantage of the army of people connected to the internet via both wired and wireless technologies, we can easily gather information that would help a citizen make an informed decision regarding his or her health and welfare (e.g., shelterin-place vs. flight). The widespread use of smartphones allows people to post geolocated reports and pictures with ease. Disaster management teams would likewise benefit from the input of more observers. On the other hand, the trustworthiness of these reports may be uncertain. For instance, a terrorist group might use crowdsourcing to redirect the community’s emergency responses to the wrong place. We first explore how a crowdsourcing system might be used to enhance disaster management, and then we investigate three ways to enhance the trust that the citizen places in such a system. Keywords-trust; reliability; crowdsourcing; mobile computing; disaster management.