Table 1 Big crisis data sources and enabling technologies

Data source: data exhaust

Mobile phones, machine learning

Call detail records (CDRs)

Epidemiology, social network analysis

Data source: online activity

The internet, machine learning

User-generated data (e.g., emails, comments, search engine and social media activity)

Sentiment analysis, opinion mining, search and rescue

Data source: sensing technologies

IoT, data visualization, machine learning

Satellites, UAVs, sensor networks, wearable devices

Social behavior and enviornmental analysis

Data source: sensing technologies

IoT, the internet, machine learning

Wearable devices, social media

Healthcare (e.g., personalized medicine)

Data source: public data

Open source and open data, machine learning

Governmental data (e.g., census, public health and transportation data)

Effective policy making

Data source: crowdsourced data

Crowdsourcing, Data visualization, neo-geography, machine learning

Crowdsourcing platforms (e.g, Ushahidi)

Crisis maps