The typhoon disaster analysis based on Weibo topic heat

Abstract

Could social media data be utilized in hazard evaluation? typhoon disaster as one of the costly disaster has become devastating threats for human. moreover, social media change the communication way of human and citizens can turn to this platform to express disaster-related information at real time. Therefore, social media improves situational awareness and widens the method of hazard information acquiring. With more and more studies investigating in relationship between social media response and degree of damage, the strong correlation has been proved. Weibo as one of the most popular social media in China can provide data with posted text, location, user identification and other additional information. Combining with 10 tropical cyclones and Weibo data in 2013, We perform a quantitative analysis between the grade of hazard situation and Weibo related topic heat in province scale. We provide a new model of Weibo topic heat to evaluate the Weibo activity in study area. Also we demonstrate the hazard assessing formula is H=1.8845ln(α) + 15.636 in tropical cyclone disaster. High level goodness of curve fitting also suggest that this equation can be used for rapid assessment of hazard caused by tropical cyclones.