Sigimera – Crisis Information Platform

The last few months I have worked on an approach for optimizing the information flow in crisis areas with the help of semantic technology. The outcome was the shift from a drone based framework, that aims to help on-site crisis staff, to a public available platform for everybody. The first phase of Sigimera (the project name), will be the launch of a portal that unifies different information sources, e.g. gdacs.org (nearly real time information from authorities), multimedia from the community (videos, pictures, messages), articles from newspapers, … . The main goal is to build an online community around the project, that brings people affected by crisis together with people that are able to help and inform outsider about the situation.

All information are semantically annotated and classified. This approach simplifies the evaluation of big data sets and optimizes the visualization of relevant information. The designed and build architecture allows a simplified frontend with a powerful backend. The backend allows enough room for extension, not only from a engineering perspective, but also from research side.

The following components are planned for the first BETA release:

• Information website that simplifies the start for user, developer, researcher, …
• User Management (with third-pary login and registration mechanism)
• REST API for developers
• Crisis dashboard recommendation that should give a first feeling what is planned and what could be done in future releases.
• User feedback mechanism

The project is in a very early stage of development, although the current status gives a good overview what could be possible in the future.

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About Alex Oberhauser

Alex Oberhauser’s current private and professional interests are Research and Development in the area of Semantic Web and Service Oriented Architecture with the focus on the applicability of new technologies in real world scenarios. He is founder of the meta project Networld and the Crisis Information Platform Sigimera (http://www.sigimera.org).

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