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---
language:
  - en
license: cc-by-sa-4.0
task_categories:
  - visual-question-answering
  - image-to-text
  - question-answering
task_ids:
  - visual-question-answering
modality:
  - image
  - text
tags:
  - DisasterVQA
  - disaster-response
  - humanitarian
  - crisis-informatics
  - VQA
  - VLM
  - vision-language-models
  - damage-assessment
  - situational-awareness
source_datasets:
  - Incidents1M
  - CrisisMMD
  - MEDIC
size_categories:
  - 1K<n<10K
pretty_name: DisasterVQA
doi: 10.5281/zenodo.18365212
configs:
  - config_name: default
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: DisasterVQA/**
dataset_info:
  features:
    - name: question_id
      dtype: string
    - name: image_id
      dtype: string
    - name: image
      dtype: image
    - name: question
      dtype: string
    - name: question_type
      dtype: string
    - name: groundtruth_answer
      sequence: string
    - name: choices
      dtype:
        struct:
          - name: A
            dtype: string
          - name: B
            dtype: string
          - name: C
            dtype: string
          - name: D
            dtype: string
    - name: disaster_type
      dtype: string
    - name: dataset_source
      dtype: string
    - name: region
      dtype: string
    - name: crisis_info_type
      dtype: string
    - name: crisis_info_code
      dtype: string
---

# DisasterVQA: A Visual Question Answering Benchmark Dataset for Disaster Scenes

## Dataset Summary

DisasterVQA is a benchmark dataset for evaluating Vision-Language Models (VLMs) on disaster-response visual question answering. It contains **1,395 real-world disaster images** and **4,405 expert-curated question–answer pairs** covering floods, wildfires, and earthquakes.

The dataset includes three question types:
- **Binary** (Yes/No)
- **Multiple-Choice**
- **Open-Ended**

Questions span situational awareness and operational decision-making tasks, grounded in humanitarian frameworks (FEMA ESF, OCHA MIRA).

---

## Dataset Structure

### Repository Layout
 
```
├── README.md
├── disastervqa_annotations.jsonl
├── taxonomy.json
└── DisasterVQA/
    ├── Incidents1M/
    │   └── ...
    ├── CrisisMMD/
    │   └── ...
    └── MEDIC/
        └── ...
```
 
### Files
 
| File | Description |
|------|-------------|
| `disastervqa_annotations.jsonl` | Benchmark annotations and metadata (question text, ground-truth answers, image paths, taxonomy labels) |
| `taxonomy.json` | Final taxonomy definitions and references for each `crisis_info_code` |
| `DisasterVQA/Incidents1M/` | Disaster images sourced from the Incidents1M dataset |
| `DisasterVQA/CrisisMMD/` | Disaster images sourced from the CrisisMMD dataset |
| `DisasterVQA/MEDIC/` | Disaster images sourced from the MEDIC dataset |

---


## License

This dataset is released under the **Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)** license.

---

## Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite the accompanying paper:

```bibtex
@inproceedings{disastervqa_icwsm2026,
  author    = {Al-Mohannadi, Aisha and Firoz, Ayisha and Yang, Yin and Imran, Muhammad and Ofli, Ferda},
  title     = {DisasterVQA: A Visual Question Answering Benchmark Dataset for Disaster Scenes},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)},
  year      = {2026},
  address   = {Los Angeles, California, USA},
  url       = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.13839}
}
```

Paper: [arXiv:2601.13839](https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.13839)

---

## Links

- 📦 Zenodo: [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18267769](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18267769)
- 📄 Paper: [arXiv:2601.13839](https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.13839)
- 🏛️ Conference: ICWSM 2026, Los Angeles, California, USA