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How effective are crowd-sourced solutions in providing timely and accurate information during earthquake disasters? 


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Crowd-sourced solutions have shown significant potential in providing timely and accurate information during earthquake disasters, leveraging the collective input of non-experts and technology to enhance disaster response and management. Studies have demonstrated that evaluations of earthquake damage by semiskilled individuals and the general crowd can closely align with expert opinions, suggesting that crowd-sourced assessments can be a valuable component of the earthquake damage evaluation process. The integration of social media and mobile signaling data has been explored to improve disaster impact assessment, with these diverse data sources complementing each other to offer a more comprehensive understanding of the disaster's effects. The repurposing of old smartphones as dedicated seismometers for an affordable earthquake early-warning system illustrates the innovative use of crowd-sourced technology to provide critical, life-saving alerts in earthquake-prone developing countries. Similarly, the utilization of felt reports via services like LastQuake has been shown to rapidly estimate the impact of earthquakes, providing a cost-effective tool for disaster management that is independent of expensive seismic instrumentation. Remote observation sensors and geoinformation technologies have also been employed to quickly gather and process information post-earthquake, showcasing the role of advanced technologies in supporting crowd-sourced data collection and analysis. The application of Ubiquitous GIS in earthquake evacuation planning further highlights the integration of crowd-sourced information with centralized and decentralized approaches to improve evacuation efficiency. Moreover, the development of layered architectures for earthquake information gathering systems emphasizes the importance of crowd-sourced data in enhancing disaster response capabilities. Finally, the adaptation of crowdsourcing platforms like MapSwipe for post-disaster damage assessment underlines the potential of crowd-sourced methods in providing fast and reliable geographic information essential for disaster management. In summary, crowd-sourced solutions are increasingly proving to be effective in offering timely and accurate information during earthquake disasters, leveraging the collective power of communities and technology to improve disaster preparedness, response, and recovery efforts.

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Papers (6)Insight
Open accessPosted ContentDOI
01 Sep 2022
Crowd-funded earthquake early-warning systems, utilizing repurposed smartphones, are highly effective in providing timely alerts, saving lives, and offering affordable solutions in earthquake-prone regions.
Crowdsourced social media and mobile phone signaling data enhance disaster impact assessment accuracy by complementing each other, providing detailed spatial disaster information, aiding in timely and accurate decision-making.
Crowd-sourced macroseismic observations can rapidly estimate the probability of an earthquake being "damaging," aiding in timely impact assessment globally, enhancing disaster management effectiveness during earthquakes.
Crowd-sourced solutions offer fairly accurate evaluations of earthquake damage severity, potentially aiding in timely assessments during disasters, complementing expert analyses.
Crowdsourced felt reports, like those from LastQuake, enable rapid distinction between high-impact and low-impact earthquakes globally within minutes, enhancing early disaster management with transparent and reproducible methods.
Crowdsourced solutions, like MapSwipe, show potential for post-earthquake damage assessment, achieving a maximum F1-score of 0.63, but with slight agreement with established rapid assessment methods.

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