Coping with Information deluge by NH Wikisaurus

Web Participatory Framework for Disaster Resilience

Coping with Information Deluge

Rapisardi Elena (1), Di Franco Sabina (2) , Giardino Marco (1) | 1 NatRisk, Interdepartmental Centre for Natural Risks, University of Turin, Italy; 2 CNR- IIA National Research Council – IIA, Rome, Italy

we b

INFORMATION NEED

equality

participation

openess

sharing

social democracy

In the web 2.0 era the need of information is increased. During a disaster information is a crucial element to cope with the event. Accurate and validated information could contribute to reduce vulnerability, and coordinate response

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But the internet could be also seen as an “information deluge”, a continuous and rather chaotic flow, or an endless library with no filtering function, where validation and trustworthyness are key to cope with this true and false endless continuum.

The production model of content is “reformed”: the lowering of means of production costs generate a new socialproduction player, the “produsage” (Axel Burns, 2008). User becomes creator, producer and distributors of any kind of content.

CYBER UTOPISM

WEB 2.0

bile techno o m l

The postGutenbergrevolution is an ongoing process. The web as a platform web 2.0 is not only an intermediary, but becomes a mediator (van Dijck, 2013) reshaping everyday life, but also, in the long term, socioeconomic systems, cultural model, and mental structures.

ies

WEB 1.0

bile techn o m ol &

collaboration

The Collaboration: a 2.0 Dilemma?

ENABLING TOOL

Technology is extraordinary, but an extraordinarily useful tool, it is not in itself the magic formula. It would be an advantage to define shared models and cultural approaches,and to overcome web rhetoric and cyberutopism, also in Disaster Resilience.

The Four Pillars COLLABORATION / OPEN KNOWLEDGE

ER CYC T S LE SA I D

Resilience STER CYC L SA E DI

Passivity Protection

Fatalism Emotional

FOCUS ON VULNERABILITY

FOCUS ON THE EVENT

Rescue Help

THE FIRST PILLAR

THE SECOND PILLAR

The first pillar is focused on a structured content availability: data and information sharing approach, in order to guarantee easy and transparent access usage of specific and validated knowledge and data. Key issues: terminology tools, open geodata & standards, knowledge based framework. For example, in Disaster Resilience this could be accomplished supporting the wide spreading of the open data initiative, and making available (share and explained) specific scientific knowledge on hazards and risks, such as scientific definitions and related concepts.

The second pillar is focused on comprehension: implementation of tools and means to allow a better understanding. The web is not one, there are different ways (tools and languages) to represent and display data and information: interactive hazard maps, timelines on historical disaster. For example during flood events, a tool to increase understanding of the hazard processes and evolution, could be an interactive map, showing hazards layers with clear explanation of hazard degree and references, the flooding occurrence in that specific area (historical data), and sensors showing real time information about waters levels measurements and the probability of flooding spreading areas based on collected historical data.

THE THIRD PILLAR

THE FOURTH PILLAR

The third pillar is focused on linked information and data: tools to set up relations between the topics of knowledge and information. We envisage the development of a true and concrete Linked Data for Disaster Resilience to build a common language and understanding so to avoid misleading information, and to increase preparedness. From this perspective metadata and ontologies are the ﬁrst building blocks to build a semantic ecosystem for DR and par consequénce for civil protection and emergency management.

BUILDING A RESILIENT KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTISING A RESILIENT INFORMATION APPROACH, REQUIRES A HIGH LEVEL OF COLLABORATION AND INTERACTION ACROSS DISCIPLINES AND STAKEHOLDERS: SCIENTISTS, PRATICTIONERS, GOVERNMENTS, CITIZENS AND MEDIA.

ELITES KNOWLEDGE / KNOWLEDGE DIVIDE

The fourth pillar is collaboration, intended as a praxis (act) driven by participatory approach, responsibility and awareness, through knowledge, competence and multidisciplinary (Goodchild, 2007). Collaboration does not mean that “anybody can do any job”, hence collaboration should consider and be aware of the limits of individual knowledge and trustworthiness. For example, Citizens Science in disaster resilience should include training programme for citizens, so to include them as contributor in observations of phenomena (natural processes and events).

2009 Abruzzo Earthquake

2012 Emilia Romagna Earthquake

fault

liquefaction

2009 * Google Trends data for the words “faglia” (fault) and “liquefazione” (liquefaction)

Do you know Natural Hazards?* The graph shows the percentage of right and wrong associations of processes to the proposed phenomena

liquefaction crown active river bed epidemic desease epicentre

right

flow sea storm eutrophication flood heat island sequence tsunami pyroclastic flow 0%

2012

wrong

underwater lanslide

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

* Survey by Rapisardi-Di Franco, published on National Geographics Italian Web Site and Le Scienze web site; respondent 1349

During disaster web information search increases. However in the internet world there are cases of misleading or inaccurate information published also by media. Reliable validated scientific information on natural hazards becomes a crucial need: scientific contents “web findability” score is not a validation index.

Terminology could be a source of ambiguity. Terminology associated with identifying and communicating risk is a relatively new science (F.M. Christensen et al., 2003). Misunderstanding on natural disaster terms is often underestimated in its consequences.

Amazing Volcanoes

Information Demand*

NH Understanding

Web Search and Find

Reframing Knowledge and Information Associating Hazard Processes and Phenomena*

Starting from the Words: Terminological Tools

The graph shows the proportion of respondents that associated the set of processes to the wrong proposed phenomena and to the word “vulcano” 73,6%

liquefaction

16,5%

underwater lanslide

32,4% 66,5% 33,1% 32,7%

sea storm ﬂood heat island sequence tsunami

thesaurus

8,8%

ﬂow eutrophication

lexicon

54,3%

active river bed epicentre

glossary

88,1%

crown

epidemic desease

EDUCATION

18,3% 32,5% 35,9%

% total wrong responses (process associated to the wrong phenomenon)

EXPERTS

PUBLIC

vulcano wrong

28,3%

pyroclastic ﬂow

wiki

7,4%

INFORMATION

* Survey by Rapisardi-Di Franco, published on National Geographics Italian Web Site and Le Scienze web site; respondent 1349

Contextaware solution (Hendler Berners Lee,2010) could be a model also for knowledge awareness in Natural Hazards Disaster Resilience [NHDR], to make the scientific content more explicit. The need for a correct and precise vocabulary in DR is an easily understandable issue, whilst not easy to implement.

It is needed to start back from «words», from their meaning and relations between concepts and terms, as precise comprehension could improve a more resilient behavior. During emergencies is crucial to understand each other on the base of a common terminology, where terms and associated concepts should be both comprehensive and unambiguous.

The Natural Hazards Wikisaurus [NHW] Framework: A Work in Progress

GLOSSARY

NATURAL HAZARDS WIKISAURUS A joint team UNITONatRisk and CNR IIA conceived a web project (in the framework of an Earth Sciences PhD program) “Natural Hazards Wikisaurus” [NHW] to combine two previous experiences: “HyperIspro” a civil protection wiki and “Earth Thesaurus” of environmental terms. The project aims to implement an augmented «terminology tool» conceived as a collaborative virtual source of validated information and knowledge on Natural Hazards and Civil Protection, to sustain and support a common understanding.

Glossaries, alphabetical lists of terms peculiar to a ﬁeld of knowledge with deﬁnitions and explanations.

THESAURUS Thesaurus, structured controlled vocabularies, covering the terminology of a speciﬁc knowledge domain.

WIKI

Wiki contains terms deﬁnitions and an explanation, each term is attributed to a speciﬁc category

COLLABORATION The NHW allows selected subscribers to collaborate. The project challenge is the commitment and the engagement of researcher, academics and practitioners, called to collaborate and actively contribute for a collaborative knowledge building.

HYPERLINKS