3 billion (40% of the world population)

mobile subscribers by 2014

Exponential social media adoption
means big social data during disasters
(20m tweets within 1 week of
Hurricane Sandy) and demands smart
technology to find actionable users in a
timely manner.

SoMeC

Social Media Coordination

The ability to
effectively engage
and inform citizens
on relief donation
needs can help:
balance what is needed vs.
what is provided
transform public goodwill into
useful action
avoid a second disaster for
humanitarian orgs

Disaster response and

humanitarian orgs
(governmental and NGOs)
interested in leveraging social
data in their workflows

SOMEC Website at
www.knoesis.org/researchers/hemant
Email: hemant@knoesis.org

A2 Hemant.indd 1

21/11/2014 16:21:20


SoMeCFounder:HemantPurohit
I am an interdisciplinary, Computing & Social Sciences researcher and a soontograduate PhD
candidate atKno.e.sis Center, Wright State University, USA. With a passion and visiontotransform
research for Social Good into practice, I see a great potential in improving work of humanitarian
organizations with technology. I heart data, and currently workon critical social problems especially
crisis response coordination, and datadriven policy intervention for UN agencies to curb
genderbased violence globally. I was one of the eight international GoogleICT4PeaceUSAID
fellowsforCrisisMappersconferenceICCM13atUNNairobi.
Webpage:http://knoesis.org/researchers/hemant
Twitter:@hemant_pt
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/purohithemant

Yourbusiness
SoMeC, a research incubation, is a web (mobile) application that automatically finds important
people and organizations to engage on social media in nearreal time to improve situational
awareness and public engagement of disaster response organizations, and beyond. Given the
growing adoption ofmobile, internet and socialnetworkplatforms,Itwillhelpresponseorganizations
to better connect and coordinate withcitizens.Itwill helpefficientlytransformgoodwillofcitizensinto
required actions for relief management, rescue redirections, and countering rumors. Using natural
language processing, network analysis anduserbehaviormodeling,SoMeCminesconversations on
social media to build a clear and authoritative picture of what the key players are saying about the
situation. SoMeC can be leveraged for other social good problems suchas datadriven awareness
for designing policy intervention, by facilitating connection with knowledgeable regional activists on
developmentissues.

What?
A Web (mobile) application to automatically find important actors to engage on social media for
situationalawareness,andtimelyspreadingprioritizedneeds(e.g.,medicalsupplies)

Who?
Disaster response organizations both formal and NGOs, and other humanitarian organizations
interestedtoleveragecitizensenseddataintheirworkflows

Why?
Disaster response coordinators need actionable information and connectivity with important set of
actorsfromsocialBigDataformakingrealtimedecisionsonspecificresponseneeds

Goals?
Transforming research on Social Good into practice for improving coordination challenge of citizens
andhumanitarianorganizations,leadingtoeffectiveworkflowsandefficiency