Automatic analysis of social media images to identify disaster type and infer appropriate emergency response

Abstract Social media postings are increasingly being used in modern days disaster management. Along with the textual information, the contexts and cues inherent in the images posted on social media play an important role in identifying appropriate emergency responses to a particular disaster. In th...

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Main Authors: Amna Asif, Shaheen Khatoon, Md Maruf Hasan, Majed A. Alshamari, Sherif Abdou, Khaled Mostafa Elsayed, Mohsen Rashwan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SpringerOpen 2021-06-01
Series:Journal of Big Data
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-021-00471-5
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author Amna Asif
Shaheen Khatoon
Md Maruf Hasan
Majed A. Alshamari
Sherif Abdou
Khaled Mostafa Elsayed
Mohsen Rashwan
author_facet Amna Asif
Shaheen Khatoon
Md Maruf Hasan
Majed A. Alshamari
Sherif Abdou
Khaled Mostafa Elsayed
Mohsen Rashwan
author_sort Amna Asif
collection DOAJ
description Abstract Social media postings are increasingly being used in modern days disaster management. Along with the textual information, the contexts and cues inherent in the images posted on social media play an important role in identifying appropriate emergency responses to a particular disaster. In this paper, we proposed a disaster taxonomy of emergency response and used the same taxonomy with an emergency response pipeline together with deep-learning-based image classification and object identification algorithms to automate the emergency response decision-making process. We used the card sorting method to validate the completeness and correctness of the disaster taxonomy. We also used VGG-16 and You Only Look Once (YOLO) algorithms to analyze disaster-related images and identify disaster types and relevant cues (such as objects that appeared in those images). Furthermore, using decision tables and applied analytic hierarchy processes (AHP), we aligned the intermediate outputs to map a disaster-related image into the disaster taxonomy and determine an appropriate type of emergency response for a given disaster. The proposed approach has been validated using Earthquake, Hurricane, and Typhoon as use cases. The results show that 96% of images were categorized correctly on disaster taxonomy using YOLOv4. The accuracy can be further improved using an incremental training approach. Due to the use of cloud-based deep learning algorithms in image analysis, our approach can potentially be useful to real-time crisis management. The algorithms along with the proposed emergency response pipeline can be further enhanced with other spatiotemporal features extracted from multimedia information posted on social media.
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spelling doaj.art-61e442eb6f0346db99444589268865312022-12-21T20:25:10ZengSpringerOpenJournal of Big Data2196-11152021-06-018112810.1186/s40537-021-00471-5Automatic analysis of social media images to identify disaster type and infer appropriate emergency responseAmna Asif0Shaheen Khatoon1Md Maruf Hasan2Majed A. Alshamari3Sherif Abdou4Khaled Mostafa Elsayed5Mohsen Rashwan6Information Systems Department, College of Computer Sciences & Information Technology, King Faisal University (KFU)Information Systems Department, College of Computer Sciences & Information Technology, King Faisal University (KFU)Information Systems Department, College of Computer Sciences & Information Technology, King Faisal University (KFU)Information Systems Department, College of Computer Sciences & Information Technology, King Faisal University (KFU)Faculty of Computers and Artificial Intelligence, Cairo UniversityFaculty of Computing & Information, Cairo UniversityFaculty of Engineering, Cairo UniversityAbstract Social media postings are increasingly being used in modern days disaster management. Along with the textual information, the contexts and cues inherent in the images posted on social media play an important role in identifying appropriate emergency responses to a particular disaster. In this paper, we proposed a disaster taxonomy of emergency response and used the same taxonomy with an emergency response pipeline together with deep-learning-based image classification and object identification algorithms to automate the emergency response decision-making process. We used the card sorting method to validate the completeness and correctness of the disaster taxonomy. We also used VGG-16 and You Only Look Once (YOLO) algorithms to analyze disaster-related images and identify disaster types and relevant cues (such as objects that appeared in those images). Furthermore, using decision tables and applied analytic hierarchy processes (AHP), we aligned the intermediate outputs to map a disaster-related image into the disaster taxonomy and determine an appropriate type of emergency response for a given disaster. The proposed approach has been validated using Earthquake, Hurricane, and Typhoon as use cases. The results show that 96% of images were categorized correctly on disaster taxonomy using YOLOv4. The accuracy can be further improved using an incremental training approach. Due to the use of cloud-based deep learning algorithms in image analysis, our approach can potentially be useful to real-time crisis management. The algorithms along with the proposed emergency response pipeline can be further enhanced with other spatiotemporal features extracted from multimedia information posted on social media.https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-021-00471-5Convolutional neural networksImage classificationObject detectionDisaster management
spellingShingle Amna Asif
Shaheen Khatoon
Md Maruf Hasan
Majed A. Alshamari
Sherif Abdou
Khaled Mostafa Elsayed
Mohsen Rashwan
Automatic analysis of social media images to identify disaster type and infer appropriate emergency response
Journal of Big Data
Convolutional neural networks
Image classification
Object detection
Disaster management
title Automatic analysis of social media images to identify disaster type and infer appropriate emergency response
title_full Automatic analysis of social media images to identify disaster type and infer appropriate emergency response
title_fullStr Automatic analysis of social media images to identify disaster type and infer appropriate emergency response
title_full_unstemmed Automatic analysis of social media images to identify disaster type and infer appropriate emergency response
title_short Automatic analysis of social media images to identify disaster type and infer appropriate emergency response
title_sort automatic analysis of social media images to identify disaster type and infer appropriate emergency response
topic Convolutional neural networks
Image classification
Object detection
Disaster management
url https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-021-00471-5
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