Abstract:

A disaster can refer to an effect and result of natural hazards like the hurricane, flood, earthquake, tornado, heatwave, etc. Every activity of a disaster management such as taking precautions, managing evacuation, running rescue missions demands accurate and up-to-date information to allow a quick, easy and cost-effective process and hence reduce the loss of lives and properties. Social media has emerged as a valuable supplementary tool in this context, providing real-time data that can assist authorities in developing prompt and effective response strategies. However, despite its potential, utilizing social media data for disaster management presents several challenges. It needs a multi-faceted approach that leverages deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) techniques tackling the complexities of contextual information and the relevance of social media content. The talk will offer actionable insights that significantly enhance situational awareness information, and decision-making during disasters.

Biography:

Sanjay K Madria is a Curators’ Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (formerly, University of Missouri-Rolla, USA). He has published over 300 Journal and conference papers in the areas of mobile and sensor computing, big data and cloud computing, data analytics and cybersecurity. He won five IEEE best papers awards in conferences such as IEEE MDM and IEEE SRDS. He is a co-author of a book (published with his two PhD graduates) on Secure Sensor Cloud published by Morgan and Claypool in Dec. 2018. He has graduated 21 PhDs and 34 MS thesis students, with 12 current PhDs. NSF, NIST, ARL, ARO, AFRL, DOE, Boeing, CDC-NIOSH, ORNL, Honeywell, and others have funded his research projects of over $25M. He has been awarded JSPS (Japanese Society for Promotion of Science) invitational visiting scientist fellowship, and ASEE (American Society of Engineering Education) fellowship. In 2012 and in 2019, he was awarded NRC Fellowship by National Academies, US. He is ACM Distinguished Scientist and served as an ACM and IEEE Distinguished Speaker He is an IEEE Senior Member and IEEE Golden Core Awardee.