A new study published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction underlined the key role which emergency communications can play in improving responses to disasters. As the risk of climate and geopolitical disasters in Europe grows, this study outlines an aspect of 112 which makes it central to resilience and disaster response in Europe.
“The European emergency number 112: Exploring the potential of crowd-sourced information for emergency management” was published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction on 6 March 2025 by Giuseppe Lelow and Fausto Marincioni. The study analysed the potential use of 112 calls and social media posts as a source of crowd-sourced information for emergency management during disasters. The authors assessed the quality of emergency data which could be gathered from social media posts and 112 calls during the 2018 Vaia storm in Liguria, Italy.
The report found that while social media can play a role in helping emergency services understand where the impact of a disaster is greatest, its reliability and relevance for emergency services were significantly lower than that of calls to the European Emergency Number 112, which provided a more precise, standardised dataset for emergency mapping.
In particular, it found that the 112-emergency call system offers a structured and highly reliable method for extracting crisis-related information, addressing many of the limitations associated with social media-based data collection.
Unlike social media, where information is shared opportunistically, often lacking direct relevance, 112 calls represent an active and participatory form of crowdsourcing, where callers deliberately engage with emergency services to provide specific, real-time information. Call operators can use standardised interview procedures to classify emergencies quickly, prioritise cases based on urgency, and streamline resource allocation. This structured interaction ensures that the data collected is immediately actionable, enhancing situational awareness and supporting effective decision-making in emergency response efforts. The use of AML and other forms of caller location also ensures that calls to 112 during disasters can be quickly mapped, helping emergency responders to assess areas with the greatest needs.
Beyond this structural approach, the report found that calls to 112 tended to cover a more representative part of the population than social media posts. Every citizen can call 112 without needing specialized technological literacy or internet.
Finally, while this report focused on the events of Storm Vaia in 2018, which caused over 3 billion euro in damages and close to 30 fatalities, in 2025 it may be beneficial to note two significant changes in the social media and 112 landscape which may make 112 an even more valuable source of crowd-sourced information during an emergency.
Online disinformation has only grown since 2018, making social media information less and less reliable, and demonstrating the value of verified sources of crowd-sourced information such as calls to 112. This issue is exacerbated by the increasing quality of deep fakes, and the capabilities of malicious actors to use social media to spread disinformation during a crisis.
A second issue is the rising severity of storms and other climate related events in Europe, which can often result in the telecommunications networks which support social media and 112 being temporarily knocked out, undermining their use as a crowd based source of information during crises. A recent example of this was Storm Éoywn in January 2025, during which some of the population lost access to 112 after the storm knocked out some of Ireland’s telecommunications infrastructure. This issue could be mitigated through new advances in direct to device satellite connectivity, which could provide supplemental 112 coverage for users in areas where there has been a network breakdown.
Therefore as Europe faces ever increasing geopolitical and climate-based threats, and emergency services face increasing difficulties in relying on social media and other crowd-sourced information to map their emergency responses, this study indicates that 112 may have growing potential to act as a reliable sensor for public safety during disasters.