Using social media to geo-target emergency management efforts

Abstract

The ubiquity of social media data has increased their use during emergency management (EM) in near real-time. For instance, during Haiti Earthquake (2010) and Hurricane Harvey (2017), Ushahidi and Twitter were used respectively for emergency response and rescue operations. Nonetheless, social media data tend to contain [ir]relevant information to be useful for disaster analytics for EM efforts. In this study, geo-tagged tweets obtained for 2013 Colorado flooding were analyzed to determine (i) what kind of situational awareness (SA) information could be extracted from tweets for emergency response and (ii) what is the spatio-temporal distribution of such information. The results indicate that tweets generated before September 12th (day of heavy precipitation) were non-relevant, but tweets generated on and following September 12th contained crisis information (about the event and its impacts), warnings, preparatory information. Next phase of this study will focus on developing a framework to integrate SA information with physical risk and social vulnerability to geo-target EM efforts.