Bewared Android Mobile Awareness Platform about Natural Disasters

Abstract

Latest developments in crowd-sourcing and inter-user information sharing has led to the idea of sharing crucial information about a near disaster. Having this information can decrease the number of casualties. If people are aware of a near disaster, they can more easily avoid it, which in term, can minimize the damage it makes. The fastest way to get informed, in these situations, is by having peer information and on-time alert. Users of the social networks, have shown, over the years, that they can share information fast in time of a crisis. This type of information sharing is commonly known as crowd-sourcing. In this paper, we propose an android awareness platform called Bewared, which, in term, allows users of the social networks to collaborate, share information and pinpoint a natural disaster with its location. The types of natural disasters, used in this research, are: earthquakes, fires, floods, fire and their level of validity. The application uses some of the existing platforms and social media networks. In our case, Bewared is supported by Facebook due to its option (application interface) to geographically locate each user of the network, by using their mobile device its real time interaction possibilities.