A study from the University of Calgary is suggesting that residents of Fort McMurray struggled online for answers during the wildfires last May.
The study was published online through the 2017 IEEE/ACM 39th International Conference on Software Engineering and would give future software developers a better sense of what people really need in a crisis, whether it is a natural disasters or caused by humans, like an act of terror.
Software engineers at the university determined that key concerns in a crisis are not being answered by smartphone emergency apps, when the internet is a primary source of information.
The research noted that during the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire social media became the unofficial emergency broadcast system.
“Our results show that the apps presently available to people in need are lacking relevant and useful features,” explains Maleknaz Nayebi, lead researcher and PhD candidate at Schulich School of Engineering. “We found that up to 80 per cent of the features people are looking for aren’t accommodated right now. There are 26 apps for wildfires in North America and Australia, for example, but they don’t have the features people really want.”
The team from U of C designed a program called “Mining App Features From Tweets” or MAPFEAT, which matched the most commonly repeated questions on social media with existing mobile apps.
Using the software, researchers combed through 69,680 tweets from May 2 – May 7, 2016 and determined that information and services that people were looking for at the height of the fire weren’t available, even with apps specifically designed to provide the information.
According to the MAPFEAT software and follow-up studies with the general public, these features would have helped the most:
- Fire alarm notification
- Food and water requests and resource
- Emergency maintenance service
- Send emergency text messages
- Safety guidelines
- Fire and safeness warning
- Request ambulance at a tap
- Find nearest gas station
- Emergency zones maps
- Find a medical centre
Nayebi and her team found only six of the top 40 concerns were addressed by existing apps and not a single in the top ten was covered.
The researchers hope their analysis may be adopted by organizations or used to update apps to provide useful information in disaster situations.
