Andrea Tapia

Pennsylvania State University | Penn State · College of Information Sciences and Technology

This study aims to demonstrate the methods for detecting negations in a sentence by uniquely evaluating the lexical structure of the text via word-sense disambiguation. The proposed framework examines all the unique features in the various expressions within a text to resolve the contextual usage of all tokens and decipher the effect of negation on...

Local social media users share and access critical information before, during, and after emergencies. However, existing methods can identify local social media users only after an emergency has occurred, and only then discover a small proportion of users sharing information in a geographic area. To address these limitations, we introduce the method...

The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has been accompanied by a large amount of misleading and false information about the virus, especially on social media. During the pandemic social media gained special interest as it went on to become an important medium of communication. This made the information being relayed on these pl...

Previous works in social media processing during crisis management highlight a paradox: citizens are extensively sharing data from the field of the crisis, while decision-makers are looking for information about the emerging risks they need to address. Several tools already exist to help taking advantage of this new important source of data. Howeve...

In this paper the authors illustrate the ethical dilemmas that arise when large public investigations in a crisis are crowdsourced. The authors focus the variations in public opinion concerning the actions of two online groups during the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing. These groups collected and organized relief for victims, col...

It is now more difficult to escape the computer than it is to find one. Through nearly endless numbers of devices, users are now performing tasks within an ecosystem of applications. No single company, single developer, or single user can comprehend the entirety of that ecosystem outside of their respective boundaries. Software design as well as th...

The purpose of this article is to investigate the verification pause—that moment when people assess how to respond to a disaster. The verification pause is potentially extended due to excess or insufficient information. Most evidence around the verification pause and its relation to new media is anecdotal. Using direct observations and interviews,...

Local social media users share and access critical information before, during, and after emergencies. However, existing methods can identify local social media users only after an emergency has occurred, and only then discover a small proportion of users sharing information in a geographic area. To address these limitations, we introduce the method...

Crisis response efforts highlight the overlapping hegemony of public groups like Reddit and professional responders. To illustrate how they overlap, we describe the evolution of user affordances and processes that allowed Reddit to provide effective information-aggregation during crisis events. Between the Boston Marathon Bombing of 2013 and the th...

During a crisis, being able to understand quickly the situation on-site is crucial for the responders to take relevant decisions together. Social media, in particular Twitter, have proved to be a means for rapidly getting information from the field. However, the deluge of data is heterogeneous in many ways (location, trust, content, vocabulary, etc...

There are typically two approaches for measuring disaster resilience: technically dynamic measures produced by sensors attached to physical objects and socially static metrics that engage demographic indicators within a given geographic location. Although these approaches allow resilience to be represented before and after disruption, it can be dif...

Theory, methodology, and applications of risk analysis contribute to the quantification and management of resilience. For risk analysis, numerous complementary frameworks, guidelines, case studies, etc., are available in the literature. For resilience, the documented applications are sparse relative to numerous untested definitions and concepts. Th...

Sentiment analysis has been widely researched in the domain of online review sites with the aim of generating summarized opinions of users about different aspects of products. However, there has been little work focusing on identifying the polarity of sentiments expressed by users during disaster events. Identifying such sentiments from online soci...

To this date, research on crisis informatics has focused on the detection of trust in Twitter data through the use of message structure, sentiment, propagation and author. Little research has examined the usefulness of these messages in the crisis response domain. In this paper, we characterize tweets, which are perceived useful or trustworthy, and...

The Aurorasaurus project harnesses volunteer crowdsourcing to identify sightings of an aurora (the “northern/southern lights”) posted by citizen scientists on Twitter. Previous studies have demonstrated that aurora sightings can be mined from Twitter with the caveat that there is a large background level of non-sighting tweets, especially during pe...

In a mass crisis event, Emergency Operation Centers EOC cannot meet the demand of thousands of individuals trying to alert or request emergency services. However, new technology, driven by the right policy and tested for strengths and weaknesses in a data rich, semi-predictable environment, can help to address current PSAP limitations. In this pape...

In the following paper, we will present an alternate method for the detection of emotional content within social media data. Current research has presented the traditional bag-of-words method in which a predefined corpus is used to measure the emotional context of each word within a message. Here we present a method in which a small subset of the d...

Twitter is a vital source for obtaining information, especially during events such as natural disasters. Users can spread information on Twitter either by crafting new posts, which are called “tweets,” or by using the retweet mechanism to re-post previously created tweets. During natural disasters, identifying how likely a tweet is to be retweeted...

The theme of ISCRAM 2016 is Resilience. Resilience has become a popular topic in emergency response and crisis management. This edition will highlight the exploration of the various facets of resilience when applied to Crisis and Emergency Management. The purpose of ISCRAM 2016 is to stimulate discussions that enable the design of resilient systems...

During large scale humanitarian crises, relief practitioners identify data used for decision making and coordination, as critical to their operations. Implicit in this need is the required capabilities for analyzing data. Given the rapidly evolving systems of collaborative data management and analysis in digital humanitarian efforts, information sc...

A new, citizen science based, aurora observing and reporting platform has been developed with the primary aim of collecting auroral observations made by the general public to further improve the modeling of the aurora. In addition, the real-time ability of this platform facilitates the combination of citizen science observations with auroral oval m...

In this paper we present Aurorasaurus: a website, a mobile application, and a citizen science initiative that allows a community of users to report and verify sightings of the Aurora Borealis. Through ad-hoc data indirectly offered through social media, a community of citizen scientists verify sightings of the Aurora Borealis. These verified data a...

The aurora borealis and aurora australis are beautiful space weather driven events whose sighting is typically based on luck given that forecasting is not spatially or temporally precise. To help increase the accuracy and timeliness of auroral forecasting, we have designed a multi-faceted system called Aurorasaurus. This system allows crisis manage...

In this paper, we examine the socio-technical impact that social media has had on coordination between professional emergency responders and digital volunteers. Drawing from the research literature, we outline the problem space and explore ways to improve coordination and collaboration between these two groups. Possible improvements include mediato...

Modern humanitarianism combines the traditional focus of unconditionally alleviating human suffering with the need to operate in an arena of providers that is increasingly crowded, heterogeneous, and technologically enabled. In this chapter, we explore networks of organizations engaged in humanitarian information management and sharing. Our goal is...

Microblogging data such as Twitter data contains valuable information that has the potential to help improve the speed, quality, and efficiency of disaster response. Machine learning can help with this by prioritizing the tweets with respect to various classification criteria. However, supervised learning algorithms require labeled data to learn ac...

Organizations that respond to disasters hold unreasonable standards for data arising from technology-enabled citizen contributions. This has strong negative potential for the ability of these responding organizations to incorporate these data into appropriate decision points. We argue that the landscape of the use of social media data in crisis res...

We have created Aurorasaurus, a website, a mobile application and a scientific tool that allows a community of users to better predict sightings of the aurora borealis. We focus on the aurora borealis as a rare and unpredictable event (as a proxy for a natural disaster), as it is in the middle latitudes, highly populated areas in North American and...

We have created Aurorasaurus, a website, a mobile application and a scientific tool that allows a community of users to better predict sightings of the aurora borealis. Aurorasuarus combines limited space weather science data, participant sightings and the analysis of social media data into a better prediction engine. This then serves to alert inte...

In this paper the authors illustrate the ethical dilemmas that arise when large public investigations in a crisis are crowdsourced. The authors focus the variations in public opinion concerning the actions of two online groups during the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing. These groups collected and organized relief for victims, col...

Social media is a vital source of information during any major event, especially natural disasters. However, with the exponential increase in volume of social media data, so comes the increase in conversational data that does not provide valuable information, especially in the context of disaster events, thus, diminishing peoples’ ability to find t...

Sentiment analysis has been widely researched in the domain of online review sites with the aim of generating summarized opinions of product users about different aspects of the products. However, there has been little work focusing on identifying the polarity of sentiments expressed by users during disaster events. Identifying sentiments expressed...

Humanitarian information coordination and sharing continue to challenge the international community. Interorganizational networks are believed to be a way to improve coordination and collaboration among humanitarian organizations. Although researchers have devoted a considerable amount of time exploring the influence of network structure on network...

Humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly collaborating through inter-organizational structures such as coalitions, alliances, partnerships, and coordination bodies. NGO's information technology coordination bodies are groups of NGOs aimed at improving the efficiency of ICT use in humanitarian assistance through greater coo...

As many NGOs find themselves responding to the same crises, they have realized the potential benefits of coordinating their information and communication technology (ICT) activities—sharing satellite communications and internet access, sharing disaster assessment information—and have created cross-organizational coordination bodies. Coordination at...

In this paper, we report on a study that empirically investigates the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) resources and network structure on performance in humanitarian organisations that respond to natural disasters. We combine two theoretical lenses, resource-based view (RBV) and social network, to analyse data collected thro...

In this paper we present findings from interviews conducted with representatives from large international disaster response organizations concerning their use of social media data in crisis response. We present findings in which the barriers to use by responding organizations have gone beyond simple discussions of trustworthiness to that of more op...

Purpose This paper seeks to examine two humanitarian information coordination bodies. The goals of both coordination bodies are the same, to find mechanisms for multiple organizations, engaged in humanitarian relief, to coordinate efforts around information technology and management. Despite the similarity in goals, each coordination body has taken...

In this research, we study inter-organizational collaboration from the perspective of multi-relational networks. We develop an agent-based model to simulate how a collaboration network among organizations emerges from organizations’ interactions through another network: the inter-organizational communication network. Our model adds links (or edges)...

In this paper we discuss the initial phases of design work that we have carried out to support the collaboration of physical anthropologists who use High-Resolution Computed Tomography (HRCT) data as a key element in their research. Drawing from sociotechnical analyses reported in earlier papers, we highlight design issues that are of particular re...

The proposed roundtable will bring together researchers from the iSchool community to discuss trends, new questions, and innovative ideas regarding social networks. For instance, how to discover and analyze subcommunities within a very large social network? How new behaviors in on-line social networks emerge through interactions? How social network...

The US has a long history of telecommunications policy aimed at providing equitable access to information and communication services. In this paper we examine the most recent of these efforts, municipal wireless broadband Internet networks. Using three cases (Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco, CA; and Chicago, IL) we examine how social inclusion is e...

Purpose – This paper aims to define and articulate the concept of digital protestainment, to address how technologies have enabled boundaries to become more permeable, and in which this permeability leads to the engendering of new cultures. Design/methodology/approach – Two case studies, within Second Life and EVE Online, are examined to see how d...

Humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly facing challenges due to the growing number of actors in the humanitarian relief sector as well as the high incidence of natural disasters. A prominent means of mitigating these challenges is through the mediation of inter-organizational structures such as collaboration bodies, whi...

We report preliminary results from a socio-technical analysis of scientific collaboration, specifically a loosely connected group of physical anthropology researchers. Working from a combination of interview data and artifact analysis, we identify current barriers to the scientists' collaboration as it relates to a valuable but scarce resource, a h...

Massive international response to humanitarian crises such as the South Asian Tsunami in 2004, the Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Haiti earthquake in 2010 highlights the importance of humanitarian inter-organizational collaboration networks, especially in information management and exchange. Though, in recent years, humanitarian information mana...

Humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly collaborating through inter-organizational structures such as coalitions, alliances, partnerships, and coordination bodies. NGO’s information technology coordination bodies are groups of NGOs aimed at improving the efficiency of ICT use in humanitarian assistance through greater c...

Purpose – This paper aims to define and articulate the concept of digital protestainment, to address how technologies have enabled boundaries to become more permeable, and in which this permeability leads to the engendering of new cultures. Design/methodology/approach – Two case studies, within Second Life and EVE Online, are examined to see how d...

Message data has, as yet, not been adopted by large-scale, international humanitarian relief organizations in an instrumental fashion. While the largest of these organizations have adopted messaging as part of their Public Relations functions, few have used any form of message data originating in the field, at the time of disaster. The message data...

In case of emergencies (e.g., earthquakes, flooding), rapid responses are needed in order to address victims' requests for help. Social media used around crises involves self-organizing behavior that can produce accurate results, often in advance of official communications. This allows affected population to send tweets or text messages, and hence,...

While in recent years research has highlighted the rise of inter-organisational collaboration among organisations in the non-profit sector and has documented issues related to forming and maintaining of these relationships, there is little known about inter-organisational humanitarian information exchange and especially the motives of collaboration...

In this paper, we explore how technological determinism can act as a belief System. To do so, we draw on a multi-organization field trial of uses of mobile computing by criminal justice personnel. Our findings make clear that mobile computing does not yet meet operational needs. In high contrast, we find that the belief these mobile computing techn...

Effective knowledge management is important to the success of information technology projects. This research applies the integrated lens of the absorptive capacity theory and the social process model of information system development projects to examine the dynamic of knowledge activities concerning broadband infrastructure development in the conte...

Within this paper, the authors present an initial analysis of a protest case study in Second Life and the policy, legal and regulatory issues it involves. In particular, the authors elaborate on the current understanding of legal frameworks within virtual worlds and build on the concept of inter-real harm first introduced by Warren and Palmer. Thre...

Inter-organizational networks often have multiple dimensions, each one denoting a type of relationship. In this research, we studied how one dimension of the network, a collaboration network, emerges from organizations' interaction on another dimension--the communication network. We modeled the emergence of collaboration as an event-based multi-age...

We use computational tools to study assortativity patterns in multi-dimensional inter-organizational networks on the basis of different node attributes. In the case study of an inter-organizational network in the humanitarian relief sector, we consider not only macro-level topological patterns, but also assortativity on the basis of micro-level org...

Disaster management information systems for international humanitarian relief are developed in contexts involving local, national and inter-governmental organizations together with local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). While the multi-organizational nature of disaster response is known to create challenges for information s...

In this work, the authors examine four cases of municipalities that have attempted to create municipal-sponsored wireless broadband networks. In each of these cases, one of the reasons given for establishing the network was to engage the citizens in their community and government. In each of these cases, the efforts have failed in some way. This pr...

In this paper, we introduce a case study of social protest that has occurred in the virtual world Second Life. This case is a labor strike that occurred against IBM by Italian employees and a large European labor union. We begin with identifying the four key elements in the protest organizing process: Identifying Supporters, Organizing and Establis...

Humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly facing complex challenges due to the high frequency of natural disasters and the growing number of actors in the humanitarian relief sector. One of these complex challenges is the management of information. In an attempt to mitigate these challenges, NGOs are increasingly collabora...

The goals of this research were to answer three questions. How predominant is religious searching online? How do people interact with Web search engines when searching for religious information? How effective are these interactions in locating relevant information? Specifically, referring to a US demographic, we analyzed five data sets from Web sea...

Sector wide collaboration in humanitarian information management will occur in a context defined by professionalization of information management more generally as well as evolving needs for data within the humanitarian relief sector. By accounting for these broader trends this research contributes to our understanding of collaboration in the human...

Most existing assessments of local Wi-Fi projects have concentrated on either top-down, government-driven endeavors, or bottom-up projects developed by volunteers or community organizations. In both Canada and the United States, existing local Wi-Fi projects—both top down and bottom up—have failed to fulfill expectations that they could increase di...