The instrumentation of the world with diverse sensors, smart phones, and social networks acquires exascale data that offer the potential of enhanced science and services. In particular, a better societal management of the overall cycle of disaster monitoring and response becomes possible, citizens may now become involved in decision making and data acquisition (crowd-sourcing), and advanced planning can economise resources.
Current systems are limited in three important elements:
(i) there is a lack of methods for handling heterogeneous data streams in real-time,
(ii) there is limited integration of big data analytics and social computing,
(iii) real-time prediction and alarm capabilities have not yet been incorporated into the infrastructure for intelligent management.