News – VASA

“Web 2.0 und Social Media im Katastrophenschutz und Hochwassermanagement”

Julia Zisgen — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 10:13:53 +0000

After the floodings in Central Europe this summer many authorities and organizations realized that social media is playing a big role in emergency managment. Therefore a lively discussion has started to find out which technologies already exist and which of them are useful in preparation for and during a crisis.

One of these discussions lately took place in Heidelberg on October 17th, 2013. The department of geoinformatics of the University of Heidelberg together with the IT specialists of Leiner&Wolff had invited several experts in this field to talk about new develpoments regarding social media in civil protection and flood control. Many speakers also shared their experiences with the floodings this summer as well as with other events or presented their current research.

VASA was discussed in the presentation of two speakers from the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance who took it as an example of how to use big data and especially social media during a disaster. You can find the presentation here (in German).

The other presentations of the conference have been uploaded to this page (all in German).

Open Day at the AKNZ

Julia Zisgen — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 12:42:33 +0000

On September 14th, the Academy for Crisis Management, Emergency Planning and Civil Protection (AKNZ) invited everyone to their Open Day. The AKNZ belongs to the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) and celebrated the 60th anniversary of education in the field of civil protection this year.

The BBK offered a broad programme to show what the AKNZ is doing. As a part of this the research projects in which the BBK is a partner were presented as well. Central to the presentation of VASA was the tool for social media analysis which many visitors found fascinating.

CeBIT 2013

Julia Zisgen — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:15:35 +0000

Members of the consortium took part in this year’s CeBIT fair in Hannover (March 5th – 9th). The VASA project was also presented there.

VASA at the International High Level Expert Meeting “Extreme weather events and their consequences for civil protection”

Julia Zisgen — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:14:09 +0000

VASA was presented at an International High Level Expert Meeting regarding extreme weather events and their consequences for civil protection.

This conference was organized by the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance and took place in Bonn on the 22nd and 23rd of November, 2012. Participants came from Germany and the neighboring countries.

At a panel about future developments in situation awareness and visualisation VASA was presented and discussed as one possible solution for dealing with large and heterogenous data.

For more information, see this article (in German).