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Title: Assessing relevance of tweets for risk communication

Journal Article · · International Journal of Digital Earth
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3]; ORCiD logo [4]
  1. Dalhousie Univ., Halifax, NS (Canada). Resilience Research Centre
  2. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Urban Dynamics Inst., Computational Sciences and Engineering Division
  3. Univ. of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS (United States). School of Computing
  4. Univ. of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS (United States). Dept. of Geography and Geology

Although Twitter is used for emergency management activities, the relevance of tweets during a hazard event is still open to debate. Here in this study, six different computational (i.e. Natural Language Processing) and spatiotemporal analytical approaches were implemented to assess the relevance of risk information extracted from tweets obtained during the 2013 Colorado flood event. Primarily, tweets containing information about the flooding events and its impacts were analysed. Examination of the relationships between tweet volume and its content with precipitation amount, damage extent, and official reports revealed that relevant tweets provided information about the event and its impacts rather than any other risk information that public expects to receive via alert messages. However, only 14% of the geo-tagged tweets and only 0.06% of the total fire hose tweets were found to be relevant to the event. By providing insight into the quality of social media data and its usefulness to emergency management activities, this study contributes to the literature on quality of big data. Future research in this area would focus on assessing the reliability of relevant tweets for disaster related situational awareness.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; National Science Foundation (NSF); US Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725; CMMI-1335187; HSHQDC-12-C-00057
OSTI ID:
1471917
Journal Information:
International Journal of Digital Earth, Vol. 12, Issue 7; ISSN 1753-8947
Publisher:
Taylor & FrancisCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 7 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (1)

Social and geographical disparities in Twitter use during Hurricane Harvey journal December 2018