Development of Social Media GIS to Support Information Utilization from Normal Times to Disaster Outbreak Times

The present study aims to design, develop, operate and evaluate a social media GIS (Geographical Information Systems) specially tailored to mash-up the information that local residents and governments provide to support information utilization from normal times to disaster outbreak times in order to promote disaster reduction. The conclusions of the present study are summarized in the following three points. (1) Social media GIS, an information system which integrates a Web-GIS, an SNS and Twitter in addition to an information classification function, a button function and a ranking function into a single system, was developed. This made it propose an information utilization system based on the assumption of disaster outbreak times when information overload happens as well as normal times. (2) The social media GIS was operated for fifty local residents who are more than 18 years old for ten weeks in Mitaka City of Tokyo metropolis. Although about 32% of the users were in their forties, about 30% were aged fifties, and more than 10% of the users were in their twenties, thirties and sixties or more. (3) The access survey showed that 260 pieces of disaster information were distributed throughout the whole city of Mitaka. Among the disaster information, danger-related information occupied 20%, safety-related information occupied 68%, and other information occupied 12%. Keywords—Social Media GIS; Web-GIS; SNS; Twitter; Disaster Information; Disaster Reduction; Support for Information Utilization