REPRESENTING AND EVALUATING A METHOD TO VALIDATE INCIDENT-RELATED REPORTS IN ENVIRONMENT WITH USER-GENERATED CONTENTS

With The advent of Web 2.0 as well as the broad Internet bandwidth led to increasing number social medium and networks. So, it has been possible for users to share vast range of information in form of photo, video and text. In addition, due to the growing number of smartphones with (GPS), not only it has possible for the users of social medium to share the listed information, but also they can share their geographical position in form of latitude and longitude. Hence, these types of reports, given their user-generated nature, can be used in the management of emergency situations. One of the challenges that lie ahead in the use of user-generated reports is lack of awareness of their credibility. Without the knowledge about authentication, reports neither can be involved in decision-making and nor can be helpful for conducting search and rescue teams to appropriate places in emergency situations. This research aims to provide a location-based method for estimating credibility of reports. In contrast with existing methods, we involved Euclidean distance as a main criterion for assessing credibility of reports. Therefore, in a case study, we simulated an event, and we asked volunteers to submit their reports based on what they see on our VGI -based web platform. Then, using the information contained in the reports, we assessed credibility of reports and the results indicate that the suggested method determining credibility of reports with 90% accuracy, and also can be used for managing crisis situations.