Crisis informatics is a field of research that investigates the use of computer-mediated communication— including social media—by members of the public and other entities during times of mass emergency. Supporting this type of research is challenging because large amounts of ephemeral event data can be generated very quickly and so must then be just as rapidly captured. Such data sets are challenging to analyze because of their heterogeneity and size. We have been designing, developing, and deploying software infrastructure to enable the large-scale collection and analysis of social media data during crisis events. We report on the challenges encountered when working in this space, the desired characteristics of such infrastructure, and the techniques, technology, and architectures that have been most useful in providing both scalability and flexibility. We also discuss the types of analytics this infrastructure supports and implications for future crisis informatics research.
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