Applying data mining techniques in the context of social media to improve situational awareness at large-scale events

Having relevant information plays an important role in every aspect of human life. Data mining supports the extraction of additional information by discovering patterns and correlations between data within the dataset under investigation. Information obtained in this way is used in various applications ranging from education, business to crisis management etc. Enhanced situational awareness is a foundation for improved decision making. A prerequisite for optimized decision making is to quickly obtain valid information on a given topic, but also to have it presented in an understandable and easily digestible form. In this paper, we propose a method for applying data mining techniques in the context of social media to improve situational awareness in large-scale events by describing a solution for an intelligent situational information portal that leverages open data information sources and channels for improving decision support.