Slándáil Project Magazine 2015

Slándáil Magazine 2015
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2015
Magazine
Security System for language and image analysis

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www.slandail.eu
info@slandail.eu
/slandail
@slandailfp7
Slándáil is a three-year project,
funded by the European Union
Seventh Framework Programme
under grant agreement No.
607691 (“Slandail”)
Slándáil is a European project that is investigating the use of
digital media in times of natural disaster and is equipping disaster
management personnel with software services for harnessing
social media for better disaster response.
We are in four countries, namely: Ireland, Northern Ireland (UK),
Germany, and Italy. The aim is for the project to help increase the
security of citizens and groups living in areas affected by natural
disasters through increasing the effectiveness and response time
of disaster management teams.
Empowering Emergency Services through Social Media

2015
Slándáil Magazine
Contents
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02
05
06
22
Section One
A Message from the Coordinator
Prof. Khurshid Ahmad introduces Slándáil.
Section Two
Slándáil at a Glance
Our key aims and objectives.
Section Three
Meet the Team
The researchers behind the project.
Section Four
Research and Innovation
Understanding disaster zones ....07
Protecting citizens..........................11
Technological development.........17
Section Five
Read all about it
An update on our communication activities and
related events.

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Key topics have been identified as the
project has progressed. Analysis of
disaster images is our next challenge.
Trust between emergency managers
and the public has proven implications
on evacuation warnings. Non-verbal
communication can be assessed and
analysed digitally. The legal and ethical
implications of using social media are
still being debated, and our computer
science teams are developing software
that responds to this delicate landscape.
While our project aims to build a working
emergency management system, these
topics are leading to research that will
extend beyond the end of the project.
With less than two years remaining there
is still a lot of ground to cover. Current
work involves testing our social media
management software with the eventual
end users. These tests are being run and
will be recorded in late September.
I hope that this magazine is useful as an
introduction to the work that we have done,
and the work that we are going to do.
Message from the Coordinator
“The goal of Project Slándáil is to ethically use social media
information in times of natural crisis and natural disasters to
better inform emergency services of the worst affected areas”.
Prof. Khurshid Ahmad
The word ‘disruptive’ can describe both
the fields of natural disaster management
and social media. Natural disasters
are disruptive, bringing with them
damage, evacuations and unpredictable
circumstances. Social media has changed
even in the months that have passed since
this project began. The nature of social
networks and how people use the Internet
is still evolving.
The project months have passed quickly,
and the findings and developments of the
project are broad. We have produced four
reportsfromdisastermanagementpartners
showing their use of social media, data and
communications. We have constructed
an ethical framework for social media in
disaster management. We have assessed
the tense relationship between saving
lives and preserving privacy. Advanced
information extraction has helped us to
develop the use of text for disasters in a
way that was not previously possible in
our partners’ emergency management
software.
Section one | A Message from the Coordinator

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Section two | Slándáil at a Glance
The Slándáil approach to harnessing social media in
emergency management (#smem) is to ethically use social
media information about natural crisis and natural disasters to
better inform emergency management. Natural disasters do
not respect borders or distinguish between citizens: in our
first year we have collaborated across countries, languages
and cultures. We work with a range of professional bodies
and emergency response professionals in order to develop
a technological solution (from advanced data analytics to
multi-lingual and multi-cultural services) and new strategies
(communication protocols to ethical and legal guidelines)
to aid in disaster management. This means that emergency
responders can better plan for, respond to, and recover from
natural disasters. Our mission is to improve citizens’ lives by
developing software solutions for better disaster response.
Slándáil focuses on the management of
disaster emergencies and specifically on how
this management can be facilitated and
expedited through the use of social media.
As a project, we are focused on the problem of flooding. We
have looked at case studies of historical flooding disasters in
Belfast, Dublin, London, Venice, and Saxony. Nevertheless,
despite this specific focus, our technological solutions
and research approach means the Slándáil system can be
subsequently modified to deal with a range of other natural
disasters (e.g. fires, earthquake, storms, etc.).
Tackling real world problems from the ground up
The Slándáil team comprises ‘end user’ partners, meaning
that our team includes emergency managers and response
professionals. Our end users include – An Garda Síochána
(IRE), Police Service of Northern Ireland (UK) and the Regional
Command Saxony (DE). We are also collaborating with
an external team at Protezione Civile de Veneto (IT). The
active involvement of end users ensures that end users are
shaping the outputs of the project. With examples drawn
from real operating environments, end users are giving the
researchers and developers in the project a clear picture of
how emergency managers truly operate; giving us the ability
to develop software solutions that are both applied and ratified
for the real world.
Project Profile | Emergency response systems using social media

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Section two | Slándáil at a Glance
Emergencies as a EU wide problem
Natural disasters do not respect borders or
distinguish between citizens. The Slándáil
system extracts information from the digital
world – a global space where each of us
engagesindeclarativelivingandoftenshareour
experiences - during times of natural disasters.
This means that data sources can range from
individual citizens sharing pictures and text
on twitter to news agencies posting bulletin
updates as the disaster unfolds. The Slándáil
system will ultimately harness texts, images,
and videos that are shared over the web
and will deal with issues of language, cultural
context, and their interrelationships. Every
moment counts, since intelligence can reduce
the possibility of harm, increase response to
the crisis, and establish what resources will be
needed for the response. Thus, the support
provided by the system will be on-the-fly as the
disaster is happening as well as offering insight
after the disaster has happened (for reflection
and subsequent regulation of plans for future
floods).
Harnessing disaster zone information that
is shared over social media
The Slándáil project will deliver a new form of
Emergency Management System (EMS) that
can aggregate information collected from
digital media and deliver relevant messages/
support to disaster management personnel.
To date, EMS have been used in isolation
from systems used in receiving and sending
information through social media. Current
use of social media in disaster management
places the burden of search, interpretation,
and communication (to and from the public and
the disaster managers) on the officials. This
means that timely and effective integration
of (possibly lifesaving) information supplied
over digital media is too difficult. There is a
huge amount of extra work involved in making
the best use of information for early warning,
rescue and rehabilitation. Slándáil’s approach
not only reduces the burden of interpretation,
but will also engender better collaboration
across borders and civil departments, and
provide helpful guidance on how to better
communicate with citizens.
Natural disasters do not respect borders or distinguish
between citizens.
The Key Problems
to be Solved
Harnessing disaster zone
information that is shared over
social media
As yet, Emergency Management Systems (EMS)
cannot yet properly harness disaster zone
information that is shared over social media.
Emergencies as a EU wide problem
A key concern is that information needs vary
for different audiences - from first responders to
defence authorities to citizens, across multiple
languages, cultures, and modalities (text, images,
video).
Societal issues, ethics and the law
It is essential that the rights of civilians and
disaster operatives are protected.
Getting the Technology Right
Dataprocessing,analyticalanalysis,andreporting
are tough challenges to solve when dealing with
the overwhelmingly large social media milieu.
Our Key Aims and Objectives

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Reflection on disaster events will better enable
emergency managers and first responders to
recover from and plan for the next flood.
Societal issues, ethics and the law
During a natural disaster there is a large volume
of information shared on social media sites like
Facebook and Twitter. Some of this information
contains private data that could be used to identify
individuals, although it is difficult to process all of
this of data. It is essential that the rights of civilians
and disaster operatives are protected - both (i) the
right to life and a safe living space before, during
and after a natural disaster, and (ii) the right to
privacy and protection of information in the publicly
open forum of digital media.
A key concern is that information needs vary
for different audiences, from first responders to
defence authorities to citizens, across multiple
languages, cultures, and modalities (text, images,
video). The Slándáil system will work across three
core languages (English, German and Italian) – this
has meant that we have needed to harness and
develop methods for aggregation of information
from different modalities and languages.
The support provided by the system also happens
at multiple stages. On-demand data will be
provided in close to real-time during a disaster.
However, communication through social media
also continues after the emergency. Social media
is used by individuals and communities to inform
friends and family of their status, for storytelling,
and often results in wide scale republishing of data.
The Slándáil system will
work with three languages -
English, German and Italian.
Getting the technology right
A major contribution of the Slándáil project will
ultimatelybeournewsoftwaresystem-anadvanced
Emergency Management System (EMS). Data
processing, analytical analysis, and reporting
are tough challenges to solve when dealing with
the overwhelmingly large social media milieu.
Navigation of the collections of data is difficult due
to a lack of clear indicators with which to monitor
and constructively respond to information, not to
mention issues of subterfuge and false data due to
rumour spreading of vast proportions.
It is clear that the development of our Slándáil
system is complex, requiring the collaboration
between technological experts from across Europe
– this includes linguistics and text analytics, speech
and communications, image and video analysis,
media annotation, and software development
organizations capable of developing intelligent
systems.
It is essential that the rights
of civilians and disaster
operatives are protected.
Section two | Slándáil at a GlanceOur Key Aims and Objectives

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Section three | Meet the Team
European Presence
Trinity College Dublin
Prof Khurshid Ahmad
https://www.tcd.ie/
Institut für Angewandte
Informatik (INFAI) e.V.
Prof Gerhard Heyer
http://infai.org/
University of Ulster
Prof. Bryan W. Scotney
http://www.compeng.ulster.ac.uk/csri.php
Università di Padova (UNIPD)
Prof. Maria Teresa Musacchio
http://www.unipd.it/
CID GmbH
Alexander Lörch
http://cid.com/
Stillwater Communications
Ltd.
Cilian Fennell
http://stillwater.ie/
Police Service of Northern
Ireland (PSNI)
Una Williamson
http://www.psni.police.uk/
DataPiano S.r.l.
Francesco Russo
http://www.datapiano.it/
Military disaster
prevention in Saxony
Stephan Seeger
http://www.bundeswehr.de/
Pintail Ltd.
Ciaran Clissmann
http://www.pintail.eu/
An Garda Síochána
Eamon O’Loughlin
http://garda.ie/
11 partners* in 4 EU countries
tackling 3 languages.
Interactive Map
* Previously partnered with CIES http://cies.ie/

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Section four | Research and InnovationYear 1 Accomplishments
Year 1 Accomplishments
Slándáil is developing a new type of Emergency Management System
(EMS). It will not only aggregate information collected from social
media, but will also deliver the information in a form that is accessible
through language analysis, annotation, and visualization. It will provide
disaster managers with support on how to deal with the information
by providing guidance on how to communicate with citizens. All this
will work across three languages (English, German and Italian).
The result will ultimately be an increase in the efficiency and
effectiveness of disaster management personnel and their ability to
harness digital media. Ultimately, saving people and property in times
of natural disaster and planning better for future events.
Our research and development has three main objectives that are the
core progress markers of the project -
Protocols to protect citizens
We are developing new rules and
guidelines to ensure that rights of the
citizens are sufficiently protected and
to better manage the confidentiality
of the collected data and processed
informationrelatingtoindividualcitizens.
We have -
• Designed an ethical framework
• Combined legal and ethical
understanding of data collection
• Created an intrusion index
Disaster zone information
Todate,wehavecollectedandreviewed
case studies and historical data about
how disaster zone information is used
andsharedbyexpertstaskedtoimprove
security of citizens and property.
We have -
• Collected and shared this information
• Captured the technology
requirements of end users
• Demonstrated EMS to end users
Technological development
The team are also building and testing
a prototype Emergency Management
System (EMS) for collecting, processing,
aggregating and disseminating
information for disaster emergency
management.
We have -
• Developed an information extraction
framework
• Published a disaster terminology wiki
• Developed Prototype 0
1 2 3

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Section four | Research and InnovationDisaster Zone Information
Disaster Zone Information
– Collected and shared
As the traditional collaborative model for
emergency management is ‘face-to-face’,
it cannot yet fully utilize the social aspect
of disaster information exchange and the
mechanism with which social media enables
citizens and emergency responders to share
and collaborate. We have looked at how
emergency responders currently use social
media during times of natural disaster, the
current technologies they have available to
them, emergency management procedures,
and level of social media usage that the end
users have. With examples drawn from a
real operating environment, end users have
given us a clear picture of how they operate
currently.
What is emergency management?
Emergency management is the process
of preparing for, mitigating, responding
to, and recovering from an emergency.
The traditional collaborative model for
emergency management is ‘face-to-face’. In
contrast,socialmediaisalreadytransforming
how people share and collaborate during
times of natural disasters. Social media is
more efficient and flexible than a wide range
of traditional communication approaches.
Effective emergency action can avoid the
escalation of an event into a disaster. This
involvesplansandinstitutionalarrangements
to engage and guide the efforts of
government, non-government, voluntary
and private agencies in comprehensive and
coordinated ways to respond to the entire
spectrum of emergency needs.
Emergency management is the process of preparing for,
mitigating, responding to, and recovering from an emergency.

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A PSNI report on the threat of major coastal flooding
- January 2014
The PSNI case study covers the serious threat of coastal flooding during
the winter of 2013/14 which had the potential to seriously impact on a
built up area of Belfast city. Overall, the case studies revealed that there
was no consistent use of social media in disaster management by the
end user agencies, but it was recognised that social media could play a
part in disaster management – in resource deployment, communication,
and decision making.
An Garda Síochána’s case study on flooding on the M11
- March 2013
The Garda Síochána case study details the incident of widespread
flooding on the M11, which is a major arterial route in to and from Dublin
city to the East Coast of Ireland. There were two serious and separate
incidents of flooding at the same location, which seriously impacted on
both morning rush hour traffic and again in the evening. The evening event
effectively resulted in a complete blockage of all routes exiting Dublin
City to the East and consequently to the South.
An Garda Síochána
PSNI
Disaster Zone Case Studies
Through collaboration with our end users, we have created an
archive of emergency management case studies and have
studied disaster events using social media data. Each case
focuses on a disaster or emergency from the perspective of the
end user.

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The District Liaison Command Leipzig’s account of the Saxony
Floods - June 2013
The Liaison Command Leipzig example covers the serious flooding in Saxony
in June 2013. This was due to a series of thunderstorms; a string of rivers and
streams in the area of Saxony had broken their banks.
Military disaster prevention in Saxony
Historical Data Analysis
Social media corpus analysis
A number of social media corpus have been processed using the TCD CiCui
system, including Hurricane Sandy and the 2008 earthquake in England. The
impact of Hurricane Sandy was examined by assessing the surrounding social
media messages from Facebook and Twitter during its impending landfall and
dissipation. Terms were tagged according to their part-of-speech and a set of
27,000 nouns were extracted where some 1,200 terms were hand labelled and
used to create an Intrusion index. Terms were classed as either referencing
an institution, an event, a person, or place among others. Another corpus of
testimonials, crowdsourced from the public by the European-Mediterranean
Seismological Center (EMSC) about their experiences of a 4.8 magnitude
earthquake occurring in England in 2008, was collected. The eyewitness
reports of the testimonials described the effect, intensity, and their experience of
the earthquake. The varying impact correlated with their exposure and aligned
with the intuitive understanding of how people are affected during disaster and
crises events. INFAI also examined how social media were used during the
flood 2013 in Central Europe and what differences in use appeared among
different kinds of social media. We found that Twitter played its most important
part in exchange of current and factual information on the state of the event
while Facebook prevalently was used for emotional support and organization
of volunteers help. In a corpus-based comparative study we showed how the
different communicative modes prevalent in the registers German Facebook,
Twitter and digital News are clearly reflected by the characteristic content,
conceptualization, and language of the respective register. The methods used
include differential analysis, sentiment analysis, topic modeling, latent semantic
analysis, and distance matrix comparison.
Disaster Zone Case Studies

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It is vital that we engender increased trust in disaster
communications. The need for trustworthy and concise
information in a timely manner is one of the key
requirements that emerged from working with the end
users - particularly as the “noise” in social media can
prevent important messages from filtering through. As
quick decision-making is required during a natural disaster,
this noise needs to be filtered as much as possible.
However, end users (emergency mangers, including first
responders and strategic disaster planners) do not use
social media in a consistent manner. We have uncovered
that better communications policies are needed. Also, end
users are currently using a wide range of technology and
software to manage emergencies within their jurisdiction.
Social media is also used in varying degrees to aid in their
planning and coordination of actions.
It is vital that we engender increased
trust in disaster communications.
The Needs of End Users
Integrity, reliability, and provenance of
informationprovided via social media will impact positively
on decision-making and resource deployment to save lives and
protect property. A reliable IT system is therefore required to
ensure that it does not fail at crucial moments. These requirements
include a threshold of trustworthiness for information received by
Slándáil end users, and an integrated system that encourages
Slándáil end users to engage in social media management
through central controllers.
Our work with our end users has drawn attention to issues
with managing and maintaining multilingual, large groups of
volunteers. Communicating concise and timely messages by
emergency management personnel in times of natural disaster is
of utmost importance, particularly in order to effectively manage
large groups of people in procedures such as evacuations.

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Section four | Research and InnovationProtecting Citizens
societal impact assessment and ethical framework
The considerable level of communication and
interaction now available thanks to social media means
that first responders and rescuers could better focus
their valuable (and much needed) resources on the
most vulnerable first. It essential to collect as much
information as is possible to minimise the loss of life
and property. This involves targeting (identifiable)
individuals and places.
The subsequent, post-disaster usage of such
information may not be allowed under a range of
When considering issues of societal impact and ethics, there are four areas of concern -
Desirability, Acceptability, Ethics, and Data Management. We share a set of questions
that can be used by service developers when considering these issues. We also share
comprehensive guidance on ethical issues.
Protecting Citizens
Societal impact, EU policy, legal and
regulatory frameworks
international, federal, and national legislations.
There is also potential for misuse of a complex
data aggregation system such as Slándáil - to this
end the team have been researching the potential
legal implications, and ethical and societal issues
surrounding data collection and aggregation.
When developing software and services for
emergency management consideration must
be given to issues of societal impact and ethics.
These issues can be described under four main
categories - desirability, acceptability, ethics, and
data management.

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Protecting Citizens
Desirability concerns thinking about the need for the
system and whether the proposed solution represents an
efficient means of meeting that need.
• What is the problem to which this particular policy, project,
or technology respond?
• What is the impact of the use of social media on your
staffing levels elsewhere and on your budget?
• What assessment has been made of the digital divide, such
as differences in digital literacy, and how do the results
shape your planning?
• Are all sources of information aimed at the public being
utilized, to maximize reach across demographics?
• What measures have been taken to train personnel on
social media use as well as on societal impact?
• How are you maintaining situational awareness away
from social media, whilst using social media for disaster
response?
• What accountability mechanisms are in place both within
your organization and for the general public?
• What type of data analytics are carried out as part of your
assessment procedures, and is the amount of data used
proportionate to the task?
Section four | Research and Innovation
Acceptability builds on desirability to incorporate
concerns of trust, accountability and public support and
consent. Trust between the end users and the public at large
is dependent on transparency in the treatment of data within
the Slándáil platform.
• Through what channels has the public been consulted
about your social media plan?
• What methods are you using to identify and keep track of
key stakeholders?
• To what extent have civil society organizations been
included throughout your policy or design process and
how have their inputs been integrated?
• What is the surveillance potential—both positive and
negative—of your social media strategy?
• What methods have you taken to ensure the consent of the
public, and how have you notified them of potential risks to
their data?
• What steps are being taken to ensure the quality of
information provided to citizens?
• How involved is the public in your response, and how
have you accounted for the drawbacks of crowdsourcing
disaster response?
• How have you communicated with the public, and ensured
that your voice is recognizable and authoritative in order to
minimize confusion?
• What measures do you have in place to prevent defamation
or to halt the spread of false information?
Questions to Ask when
developing your Technology

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Protecting Citizens by taking an Ethical ApproachProtecting Citizens by taking an Ethical Approach
Ethics refers to the application of values and moral standards - these will
inform the use of the Slándáil software services. An ethical approach takes
into account trust and other factors, and considers issues such as privacy,
human rights, power imbalances, and proportionality.
An appropriate ethical framework is a key part of any project that intends
to use a large volume of public data. In Slándáil this will help to ensure that
we are appropriately managing and regulating data. The ethical and factual
provenance – ensuring that information comes from accurate data and has
Privacy and Informed Consent
The implications for the Slándáil system
with regards to (i) rights and expectations
of privacy and (ii) informed consent will be
ethically identified and analysed.
Legal Fragmentation and Technological
Progress
The ethical consequences of the
fact that relevant legal contexts are
fragmented geographically and evolving
at a pace slower than that of technological
innovation will be addressed.
De-humanization of subjects
There is a risk that researchers and
end users dealing with datasets feel a
“conceptual distance” from the human
subjects who provide the data.
Discrimination and Social Exclusion
(Digital Divide)
Consideration of the lack of access
to technology for certain members of
communities will be made, particularly
those already economically disadvantaged
or vulnerable to natural disasters.
Abuses of power and human rights
violations
The risk of misuse of potentially identifying
social media data will be addressed in the
development of the ethical framework and
protocols with the aim of minimising the
possibility of subsequent abuse.
Anonymity vs. Identifiability
Ethical measures required to minimise
risks of individual’s identification will be
considered in the development of the
ethical framework.
been ethically sourced - of data is of utmost importance for the vulnerable
and for the rescuers. This data, if collected and mined surreptitiously,
can undermine trust and negatively impact future communications with
stakeholders, not to mention that such activities are often prohibited under
a range of national, federal, and international laws.
Ourethicalframeworkprovidesguidanceateachstageoftheemergency.
While the framework is currently a work in progress, we share with you the
core tenets of our framework.

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Ethics concerns thinking about values and moral standards.
• How does using openly accessible social media content during
emergencies impact on freedom of expression for different
social groups?
• What steps are being taken to anticipate and prevent
stigmatization of social groups, either through your social
media plan or through the actions of social media users?
• What steps have been taken to stop the technology from
succumbing to dual use ?
• What measures are in place to protect key freedoms such as
freedom of speech, of assembly and of movement?
• What steps have been taken to ensure the inclusion of people
with disabilities as part of your social media use?
• How does your use of social media reinforce, and not restrict,
political rights?
• How are you identifying victims and survivors and protecting
the dignity and reputation of each, both online and offline?
• Do you have measures in place to prevent backdoor access
and to ensure the on-going legality of your project?
Do you have measures in place to
prevent backdoor access and to ensure
the on-going legality of your project?
Protecting Citizens

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• Does this project, policy or technology
conform to European and national
regulationsonprivacyanddataprotection?
• Have you consulted and/or informed your
national data protection authority (DPA) of
your plans?
• What procedures are in place to verify the
on-going legality of your project, policy or
technology?
• Does the information you have retrieved
include personal data? Is the information
you publish considered “public”?
• How is geolocation being used for disaster
response, and is user identification being
associated with geographical information?
• What measures (e.g. Privacy by Design
(PBD) or the encouragement of Privacy
EnhancingTechnologies(PET))areinplace
to ensure that user data is anonymised?
Data Management concerns the
processing, transportation, and storage of
data. During a natural disaster there is a
large volume of information shared on social
media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Some
of this information contains private data that
could be used to identify individuals. Privacy
and personal data protection is both a legal
and societal question. When considering
data management, engineers and other
data managers are compelled to follow
existing law. Data management should also
encompass principles of minimization and
anonymization of data collected, as well
as techniques such as privacy by design
and tools such as privacy-enhancing
technologies.
TheSlándáilplatformsystemwillfacilitateend
user compliance with legal data protection
and data retention requirements at each
stage of the emergency management
lifecycle. Concerns of data-minimisation and
anonymizationarealsobeingconsideredand
measures are being taken to pursue them as
far as possible (e.g. Intrusion Index) both in
the system design and in user-practice. We
also apply the principle of privacy by design
- standard data security and accessibility
controlsarebeingadoptedandimplemented.
It is important that the data management
strategies taken are transparent, as this will
engender both trust and accountability.
• Are you favouring privacy protection as
part of your default settings?
• What steps have been taken to minimize
the amount of personal data required?
• What access do third parties have to
user data, and what protocol is in place
to approve or deny these requests and
notify users?
• Do you have a plan to prevent hacking
or unauthorized access, including from
within?
• How are you accounting for the potential
for mis-identification?
• Do you have a procedure in place for
redress or deletion of data?
• How is respect for data input and output
being integrated into the professional
routines of your personnel?
What measures (e.g. Privacy by Design or the
encouragement of Privacy Enhancing Technologies) are in
place to ensure that user data is anonymised?

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Protecting Citizens Section four | Research and Innovation
the Slándáil intrusion index
The Intrusion Index is being designed for the Slándáil
system in order to better protect the privacy of individuals
that may be named on public social media sites. When
implemented, it will highlight named entities that appear
in text so that the system can later privatise this data, for
example by automatically deleting all place and person
names. Other data, such as the content of tweets, can still
be useful to train the system for future natural disasters, so
by deleting sensitive data the rest of the text can still be
useful.
Early tests on the Intrusion Index have shown that less
than one in five words in public media sources contain
a person’s name. Many more of these names have been
found to belong to public officials, such as heads of state
or emergency managers.
However, named entities can include Twitter handles and
place-names, and any data that can identify an individual
person should be removed from the Slándáil system unless
it can be used to help protect them from danger.
Test on sample sets of social media messages collected
from sites such as Twitter and Facebook to determine
potential entity occurrences have been conducted.
Processing the messages according to the intrusion index
method, names of institutions, events, people, places,
and Facebook and Twitter names were identified. In one
particular sample of 27,000 tagged words, some 8.4%
were institutions, 7.9% events, 7.5% person names, 4%
places, and 57.1% were Twitter and Facebook handles.
Research on the Intrusion Index is ongoing, and as the
Slándáil prototypes are developed over the coming
months the index will be tested more frequently.

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Section four | Research and InnovationTechnological Developments
The Technology Behind The Slándáil Solution
Effective and timely social media usage requires an
abilitytocaptureandaggregatemasscommunications,
to analyse this collected data, and to use it in an
emergency management system. Once social media
messages can be captured, aggregated and analysed,
the rescuers can use this information to make decisions
and communicate these decisions to the public. They
can also reflect upon the disaster and better plan for
the future.
The Slándáil technology Vision
The major contribution of the Slándáil project will be
in the organisation of texts and images so that we can
do complex on-the-fly analytics (when responding
to emergencies) as well as reporting on historic
events (for reflection on the disaster and to improve
our plans for the future). The thrust of technological
development in Slándáil is in creating a learning system
that can associate the visual information with textual
information and provide intelligent support.
• Text analytics in Slándáil is based on a disaster
lexicon – a dictionary that contains disaster related
terms – and a conceptual ontology. An ontology
is a technology structure (similar to a database and
software used to access the database) that defines
vocabulary through keywords and key relationships
between concepts and terms.
• Image analytics in Slándáil are based on examining
key visual primitives - the advanced features beyond
shapes,textures, colours-andtheirinterrelationships.
Algorithms based on characteristics of the human
visual system are being developed for fast image
processing and automated scene and event
recognition.

18
Analytics for text and images
Previous text analytic and image analytic
systems that have already been developed by
the academic partners, funded either through
EU or national funding, are currently being used
to analyse documents and images related to
disasters. Text analytic information extraction
systems include CiCui and Rocksteady at TCD and
the Leipzig Corpus Miner (LCM) at INFAI, which
will be incorporated into the Topic Analyst system
developed by CID.
Text Clustering
An important aspect of a continuous and broad
coverage of text and image capture systems for
disastermanagementisthatsuchasystemallowsfor
identification of named entities – people, places,
and objects. This identification is essential during
an emergency, however, in normal circumstances
this could facilitate surreptitious collection of
information for the named entities, thereby being
potentially in conflict with the norms of a civil
society (in particular raising privacy concerns). The
Slándáil team is working on creating a system that
monitors the collection of such information while
ensuring that the system log is considered both
safe and acceptable.
CiCui and Rocksteady
CiCui and Rocksteady were developed
underEnterpriseIrelandandTrinityCollege
Dublin grants running between 2009
and 2014. News articles are monitored
and captured by the CiCui system and
the numerical data are presented by the
Rocksteady system. These systems were
originally developed to demonstrate the
relevance of automatic sentient analysis
and automatic ontology production.
CiCuiandRocksteadyhavebeenmodified
for analysis of social media within
Slándáil. Part of our Slándáil disaster
lexicon and ontology has been created
by using the CiCui system. This has been
collected by scraping recent disaster
news feeds (texts written in English)
automatically. The data that is collected
is then visualised using Rocksteady.
Information Extraction
2,500 RSS feeds are used for automatically collecting
German news from public online sources as well as a
number of documents from German newspapers.
We have used a German corpus of news feeds
that has been automatically collected during
the last 20 years by the University of Leipzig.
Currently, a list of about 2,500 RSS feeds is used
for automatically collecting German news from
public online sources as well as a number of
documents from German newspapers. Focusing
on the time of the flood event in 2013 we have
been able to automatically extract characteristic
flood terms. These terms will further be used for
filtering and collecting relevant documents from
other sources and can be used for the creation
or further elaboration of a German disaster (flood)
lexicon. First experiments have been carried out
on a flood sub-corpus for the disasters in 2002
and 2006. As a form of unsupervised clustering
we applied topic model analysis. In a first step, we
extracted the flood from the general corpus of the
relevant time period. In a second step we then
inferred a number of topics which occur inside
this flood topic. Additionally, we analysed and
visualized development of all topics over time and
thereby got a view on internal temporal structure
and development of the event over time. The sub-
topic extraction also was applied to German social
media flood data from Facebook and Twitter.
From the perspective of an end user this allows
us to automatically order and filter flood-related
documents with respect to their content.

19
The Slándáil Text Analytic Module (STAM)
STAM combines the functionality of each of the analytics systems. The use of more
integrated text analysis that will target flood terms and words in social media text is the
main benefit of this. The STAM module will be used in the development of prototypes
for testing over the next eighteen months.
The text analytic systems are being used to graph frequency of terms and words that appear in text in
traditional news media and social media. The chart above is taken from the Slándáil disaster newsletter,
which is updated weekly with results of natural disaster terms from around the world.
Leipzig Corpus Miner
German disaster-texts are also under
examination thanks to the “Leipzig
Corpus Miner (LCM)“ - a text mining
software system (developed as part of
the ePol project) for a qualitative data
analysis which facilitates statistical
research for academics from the social
science and humanities. The software
has been further developed and modified
as to allow for automatic analysis of
social media data. It now offers methods
for a wide range of tasks in Information
Retrieval, Lexicometrics, Topic Model
Analysis, and Classification.
Information Extraction

20
languages and terminologyThe building of an information extraction
system relies heavily on the existence of a
set of keywords related to the domain in
which the system is expected to be used (i.e.
disaster management and flooding). These
keywords must be conceptually organised
to facilitate better access and interpretation.
Theconceptualorganisation,inturn,requires
the creation of an ontology (representation
of this entails using information science by
defining their names, definitions, metadata/
properties and any interrelationships). The
ontology is largely language independent
and relates key concepts in the domain.
We have created a dedicated Terminology
Wiki (http://slandailterminology.pbworks.com/, not
yet publicly available) displaying all the terms
relating to the concept fields of emergency
management, natural hazards and people
in emergencies, which were extracted from
the corpora of texts collected in the previous
stage of the project.
This Terminology Wiki comprises
elaborated terms in English, German,
The terms used in disaster management come from engineering, administration,
the various sciences, and from the knowledge of policing, fire, and rescue services.
These will form the backbone of the Slándáil prototypes as they will serve as a
dictionary to comprehend and organise digital data.
and Italian. The lexicon will serve as
the multilingual knowledge base for the
project ontology. The lexicon and the
resulting ontology, in turn, will be used
for analysing formal and social media
content, thus allowing detection of the
presence of named entities, beginning/
end of events, and the well-being status
of people or places.
Another important goal of our lexicon
was to try to harmonise currently existing
terminologies by looking at various
institutions dealing with emergency
management, including the
European Union. Therefore, terms
were also sometimes compared
andcollectedfromtheInternational
Red Cross, UNISDR, or EIONET to
ensure a more comprehensive
approachtoterminologyextraction
and management. You can read
more about the Terminology Wiki
here http://slandail.eu/disaster-
lexicon-now-available-on-the-
project-terminology-wiki/

21
Section four | Research and Innovation
Two systems form Prototype 0 - Topic Analyst, a text analysis system
that performs language processing and provides semantic search from
online sources created by German technology company CID, and SIGE,
an alarm and emergency system that helps emergency managers send
out messages and target key areas during a natural disaster created
by Italian company DataPiano. Both systems were loosely coupled and
demonstrated to end users using dummy data of an emergency to show
how the systems may operate together.
Topic Analyst provides an analysis tool for filtering, search, investigating
and datamining on huge amounts of documents collected and pre-
processed by CORPUS backend as well as academic partners. Features
of the Topic Analyst system are language processing, entity recognition
for e.g. companies, persons, organisations and locations, as well as
lemmatized keyword extraction. During a time of natural disaster, this
system can be used to pull in news and public social media posts. When
an occurrence of key terms such as location or a particular type of
emergency is highlighted within the text, Topic Analyst automatically sends
a warning to a monitoring station where an emergency manager can view
its readings. If the emergency manager decides that the data warrants an
alarm, he/she can activate SIGE, which allows fast contact with various
emergency management resources, and shows maps and information on
the region that may be affected. The next step in the project will be to
take the academic partner research on flood terms and use these as a
filtration system to improve the outputs from Topic Analyst.
Prototype 0
We are building a number of prototype systems to
tackle the issues of using social media for better disaster
response. These prototypes include – combining online
material retrieval with emergency communications, text
analytics, image analytics, the aggregation of text and
image, and the capability to deal with multiple languages.
Technological Developments

22
Why not check out http://www.slandail.eu to keep up to date with project
news. Recent interesting developments include the following -
• Feature articles are now shared alongside project news on our Slándáil
website http://slandail.eu/features/ - Features comprise human-interest
stories and record interesting research and other events of interest to
a wide audience.
• The Slándáil Disaster Newsletter -contains aggregated data, graphs,
and links to archived news as well as a Slándáil Newsletter Analytics
(SNA) tool which enables the user to dynamicly generate graphs
for investigating disaster news. The SNA combines textual analysis,
statistical analysis, data management, and web graphing features.
Check it out here http://anglo.scss.tcd.ie/slandail/newsletter/
• And of course our Digital Magazine - Make sure that you are on our
mailing list – you can join the mailing list by using the signup form on
the project website http://slandail.eu/contact-us/mailing-list/
Keep up to date with Slándáil news
Upcoming Events
There are several related events coming up over the next couple of
months on social media in emergency management. In particular, watch
out for:
• IDEAL 2015 Conference. 14-16 October 2015 (Wroclaw, Poland),
http://ideal2015.pwr.edu.pl
• KommunikationsFluten. International Conference on the
communication during the flooding 2002 ans 2013 in Saxony, 06
November 2015 (Leipzig), http://konferenz.eijc.eu
Section five | Read all about it
Slándáil out and about

Slándáil Project Magazine 2015

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