Seismic and survey data are useful for capturing the objective damage that the earthquake has caused St. Himark. However, this data has limitations. First, official surveys are time consuming and do not stay current in a rapidly changing situation. Second, they don’t establish how citizens are reacting to the current crisis. Third, they are often insufficiently granular, providing little insight into differences between neighborhoods. In other words, the seismic and survey data do not provide an up-to-date view of the structural and humanitarian impact caused by the earthquake on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. The City has concluded that this knowledge is necessary to determine where to allocate emergency resources.

City Officials have identified a subset of Y*INT, a community-based social media platform, as a potential source for revealing the current state of St. Himark’s neighborhoods and people. Knowing that you are skilled in visual analytics, the City has asked you to analyze Y*INT messages in order to determine the appropriate actions it must take in order to assist the community in this disaster.

Tasks and Questions:

The City has been using Y*INT to communicate with its citizens, even post-earthquake. However, City officials needs additional information to determine the best way to allocate emergency resources across all neighborhoods of St. Himark. Your task, using your visual analytics on the community Y*INT data, is to determine the types of problems that are occurring across the St. Himark. Then, advise the City on how to prioritize the distribution of resources. Keep in mind that not all sources on Y*INT are reliable, and that priorities may change over time as the state of neighborhoods also changes.

  1. Using visual analytics, characterize conditions across the city and recommend how resources should be allocated at 5 hours and 30 hours after the earthquake. Include evidence from the data to support these recommendations. Consider how to allocate resources such as road crews, sewer repair crews, power, and rescue teams. Limit your response to 1000 words and 12 images.
  2. Identify at least 3 times when conditions change in a way that warrants a re-allocation of city resources. What were the conditions before and after the inflection point? What locations were affected? Which resources are involved? Limit your response to 1000 words and 10 images.
  3. Take the pulse of the community. How has the earthquake affect life in St. Himark? What is the community experiencing outside the realm of the first two questions? Show decision makers summary information and relevant/characteristic examples. Limit your response to 800 words and 8 images
  4. The data for this challenge can be analyzed either as a static collection or as a dynamic stream of data, as it would occur in a real emergency. Describe how you analyzed the data - as a static collection or a stream. How do you think this choice affected your analysis? Limit your response to 200 words and 3 images.

Download the Submission Form and the Data