The workshop on the use of social media and crowdsourcing for disaster management successfully took place on 11 December in Bled, Slovenia.
The event was organized by the E2mC consortium and constituted a great opportunity to gather stakeholders from heterogeneous backgrounds and engage in fruitful discussions on the use of social media and crowdsourcing for disaster management. More than 50 participants attended the event including Copernicus EMS authorized users, research institutes, industry, EU representatives and related project and initiatives.
“The workshop has been an excellent opportunity to share our results with the community and get precious feedback from practitioners, researchers and technology providers. The event was valuable food for thought for the last phase of the project”. Domenico Grandoni – EGEOS
The main purpose of the event was to show the progress and already promising results of the E2mC project, ending in April 2019, and to collect feedback from relevant stakeholders on Copernicus WITNESS, the prototype developed by the E2mC consortium which aims to improve the timeliness and accuracy of geospatial products provided by Copernicus EMS by integrating social media, crowdsourcing and machine-learning within its existing services.
The presentation of the project was broken down in three main parts. The General project overview of the project given by Domenico Grandoni (EGEOS) was followed by a presentation on the possible integration of Social media and Crowdsourcing in Copernicus EMS services, respectively carried out by Chiara Francalanci (Politecnico Di Milano), Jose-Luis Fernadez (University of Geneva) and Amudha Ravi Shankar (University of Geneva). The introduction to the project was completed by a technical presentation and demonstration of the WITNESS performed by Marco Corsi and Domenico Grandoni (EGEOS).
The programme was further enriched by presentations from Kenny Meesters (TU DELFT), Yves Stevens (CrisisCentre Belgium), Luka Girardo (ESA) Jose-Miguel Roncero-Martin (DG ECHO), and related projects and initiatives including VOsT, I-REACT and SmURBS.
“As a Copernicus EMS user, we are really looking forward to the final results of the E2mC project. By improving the quality of the maps, the project has the potential to make Copernicus EMS more useful for emergency services” Yves Stevens – Crisis Centre Belgium
Another workshop showing the final results of the project will be organized around Spring 2019. Please the E2mc wbesite or follow @e2mC_H2020 on Twitter for updates.