Applying Web 3.0 Resources on Disaster Management Initiatives to Facilitate Information Retrieval, Visualization and Content Integration.

The impact of the Web 3.0 (also known as the Semantic Web) on disaster management information, education, and training cannot be overstated. As massive amounts of data become available in open standards, there is a growing need to leverage the tools and technologies of the Web 3.0 to structure and represent knowledge so that both humans and machines can understand and use it in all phases of disaster management. In the last few years, a number of initiatives that have emerged under the umbrella of the notion of “crowdsourcing” became embedded in higher education cultures and are also available as pedagogic applications for higher education: some examples are wikis, mapping tools, tagging platforms, et cetera. The term crowdsourcing was coined in 2006 by Jeff Howe to describe the outsourcing of a set of tasks to a generally large group of people who respond to an open call. In the disaster management domain, crowdsourcing methods can be utilized in teaching and learning and thereby applied to data aggregation, localization, categorization, and analysis. In the process of development, it is important to locate the applications so that processes and content are informed by the experiences, understandings, and aspirations of agencies and communities in relation to preparedness and responses to disaster events. This chapter will offer an account of projects and initiatives in the area of disaster management that apply state-of-the-art resources of the Web 3.0 to facilitate information retrieval, for optimal teaching and learning.