title: Rapid assessment of disaster damage using social media activity.
abstract: Could social media data aid in disaster response and damage assessment? Countries face both an increasing frequency and an increasing intensity of natural disasters resulting from climate change. During such events, citizens turn to social media platforms for disaster-related communication and information. Social media improves situational awareness, facilitates dissemination of emergency information, enables early warning systems, and helps coordinate relief efforts. In addition, the spatiotemporal distribution of disaster-related messages helps with the real-time monitoring and assessment of the disaster itself. We present a multiscale analysis of Twitter activity before, during, and after Hurricane Sandy. We examine the online response of 50 metropolitan areas of the United States and find a strong relationship between proximity to Sandy's path and hurricane-related social media activity. We show that real and perceived threats, together with physical disaster effects, are directly observable through the intensity and composition of Twitter's message stream. We demonstrate that per-capita Twitter activity strongly correlates with the per-capita economic damage inflicted by the hurricane. We verify our findings for a wide range of disasters and suggest that massive online social networks can be used for rapid assessment of damage caused by a large-scale disaster.
authors.affiliation: National Information and Communications Technology Australia, Melbourne, Victoria 3003, Australia.; Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria 3145, Australia.; Data61, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia.
authors.forename: Yury
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7252-1524
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kryvasheyeu
authors.affiliation: National Information and Communications Technology Australia, Melbourne, Victoria 3003, Australia.; Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria 3145, Australia.; Data61, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia.
authors.forename: Haohui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.; Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
authors.forename: Nick
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-1127-2231
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Obradovich
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and GISC, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Leganés 28911, Spain.
authors.forename: Esteban
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Moro
authors.affiliation: National Information and Communications Technology Australia, Melbourne, Victoria 3003, Australia.; Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia.; Industrial and Operations Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2117, USA.
authors.forename: Pascal
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7085-9994
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Van Hentenryck
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.; Division of Medical Genetics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
authors.forename: James
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7795-1638
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fowler
authors.affiliation: National Information and Communications Technology Australia, Melbourne, Victoria 3003, Australia.; Data61, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia.; Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cebrian
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D055867:Cyclonic Storms; D004190:Disasters; D004630:Emergencies; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D061108:Social Media
keywords: Climate Change Adaptation; Disaster Management; Social Media; Social Networks