With storm intensity and frequency rising globally, and hurricanes causing more than $1.1 trillion in damage in the U.S. between 1980 and 2021, understanding how communities cope with disruptions is increasingly vital. Studies show that many residents choose to shelter in place rather than evacuate during major storms, making them reliant on up-to-date, hyperlocal information and access to resources. Researchers Robert Bao, Goutham Mittadhoddi, Mandy L. Wilson, Chris J. Kuhlman, Pallab Mozumder, Shahnawaz Rafi, Achla Marathe, Anil Vullikanti, and Nafisa Halim draw on previous research in social capital, disaster communication, and community resilience to present a tool that allows users to define their local interaction radius, share evolving conditions, and communicate in multiple languages.
Their paper, “StormShare: A Crowdsourcing Web Application to Enhance Resiliency during Hurricanes,” introduces a web-based platform designed to improve community resilience during hurricanes through real-time crowdsourcing. StormShare demonstrates how citizen-generated updates on flooding, outages, debris, or resource shortages can complement traditional sensing and reporting mechanisms, providing a richer picture of on-the-ground conditions. In practice, such tools could support situational awareness for utilities, transportation agencies, and local governments; inform post-storm recovery planning; and strengthen community engagement strategies during extreme events. This work offers practical insights into integrating community-driven data streams into resilience planning, emergency management systems, and infrastructure performance assessments. Learn more about this study and how resilience-support technologies can help engineers design for more responsive, adaptive, and socially informed infrastructure systems in Natural Hazards Review at https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/NHREFO.NHENG-2230. The abstract is below.
Abstract
In advance of an approaching hurricane, residents must prepare and make decisions. Families might need windows boarded up before the storm and fallen trees removed afterward. Those sheltering in place may need additional resources, such as generators, food, potable water, and access to healthcare. Local governments may provide information at a municipality level, but sharing awareness about more proximate hazards may be beyond their capabilities. We developed a web application, StormShare, to assist with these and other needs, contributing to capacity building for social resiliency. Developed with guidance from domain experts, three Florida municipalities, and a focus group, with further refinements recommended by two additional focus groups, StormShare depends on crowdsourcing, whereby users provide information to facilitate cooperation through community involvement. Users can post about where goods can be found, services they are willing to provide, and localized alerts, while other users rely on these posts to make informed decisions. In this paper, we describe StormShare, explore some of the considerations of developing a crowdsourcing application for hurricane preparedness, and offer recommendations for future improvements.
Learn more about how crowdsourcing can enhance your community’s resilience during and after hurricanes in the ASCE Library: https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/NHREFO.NHENG-2230.
