Use of Linked Data in the design of information infrastructure for collaborative emergency management system

The evolution of communication channels and social networks proliferation through the web are inspiring and enabling the construction of collaborative environments. This article proposes an architecture of processes that aims to identify information responsibilities within a general emergency scenario, considering a new way of data provenance: citizens and government agencies. Citizens, who experience as victims a chaotic scenario, can also act as collaborators, providing relevant and useful information for the decision-making process. Today, they already do this informally, sharing public interest information through social networks, such as the Tweeter. The architecture also provides procedures for treating reliability and credibility of the information, provided by the so-called “anonymous officials”, subjecting it to a filtering and verification process. The heterogeneity of information formats is a well-known problem that affects organizations and communities that wants to access public data. The architecture includes a Linked Open Data (LOD) approach for acquisition and integration of data maintained by government agencies that adopt different publishing standards. A solution to this problem is of particular importance to emergency response organizations that need access to all information available to better respond to disasters and crisis.