Disasters 2011 - Special Workshop on the Internet and Disasters

The Internet is transforming how people communicate during and after large disasters; for instance the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, which left tens of thousands dead and misplaced hundreds of thousands more. The purpose of this workshop is to examine the role of Internet and mobile communications in this and other disasters. The scope of the workshop is broad, ranging from basic wired and wireless infrastructure through to the use of applications like Twitter, Facebook, and Ustream. The workshop seeks contributions that analyze what happened, as well as those that look at how improvements may be made before, during, and after an event.

The workshop hopes to encourage collaboration and the sharing of data, for instance in order to produce a more comprehensive view of how different modes of communications were used. Towards this end, the workshop solicits an "intent to contribute". This is a one-page submission that indicates the topic of the contribution, the data sources, the conditions under which the data may be shared (open, proprietary, anonymized, and so on), and the type of contribution. The type of contribution may be a peer-reviewed paper and talk, a talk only, or data only. A summary of these intents will be posted on the wiki at http://conext.wide.ad.jp/. Contributors may use this wiki to form collaborations, or to find other sources of data that may strengthen their contributions. Peer-reviewed papers will be part of the official proceedings and made available on the ACM Digital Library. Talks will be posted on the workshop website.

The intent to contribute must be no more than one page (10 pt. font) in the PDF format, and should be submitted through https://hotcrp.iijlab.net/swid2011/. It must contain the following information:

Authors and affiliation
Contribution abstract
Data source
Data sharing conditions (open, NDA, anonymized, no sharing, etc.)
Contribution type (paper and talk, talk only, data only)
Expected talk length
The intent should be submitted as early as possible, but no later than July 8. The intent authors will receive notification regarding the intent within one week of submission. The notification will be accept, requires changes, or reject. Modified intents must be submitted by July 8. Accepted intents will be posted on the wiki. Authors may post comments on the wiki.

If an intent is type "paper", then the paper must be submitted by Sept. 2, and authors will be notified by Sept. 16. The notification may indicate that the paper is rejected but a talk is still allowed. This is in order to insure a high publication quality while still allowing interesting data to be presented and discussed in the workshop.

Talk length guidelines will be made available on Sept. 23. This tells presenters how long their talks will be, and is based on making the workshop as interesting, informative, and interactive as possible. Talks are due Oct. 7, and feedback on talks will be given by Oct. 21. All talks will be posted online.

Submitted papers must be at most eight (8) pages long, including all figures, tables, references, appendices, etc. They must be formatted according to the standard alternate ACM double column format except that all text must use a font size of 10 points or larger. Longer submissions will not be reviewed. You are strongly encouraged to use the modified 10pt ACM sig-alternate-10pt LaTeX template. Papers can be registered and submitted through EDAS. Accepted papers will be published in accordance with CoNEXT camera-ready guidelines.