Crisis Informatics

Crisis informatics research develops computational methods for processing and analyzing information during mass emergencies and disasters. This work addresses challenges including parsing informal messages, handling information overload, and prioritizing actionable information for first responders and affected communities. Key contributions include developing crisis-specific lexicons for filtering relevant communications, creating algorithms for matching resource requests with offers, and studying how physical and social detachment affects information needs during crises. The research also encompasses automatic extraction of information nuggets from disaster-related messages and the development of evaluation standards for crisis informatics systems through temporal summarization tracks.