Communications of the ACM
Floods and Hurricanes Predicted With Social Media
New research by the University of Warwick has found that social media can warn us about extreme weather events before they happen.
Credit: muffinn/Creative Commons
Researchers at the University of Warwick in the U.K. have found social media can be used to warn people about floods, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events before they transpire by focusing on photos and keywords posted online.
Warwick's Nataliya Tkachenko and colleagues tracked photos and videos tagged with words such as "river," "water," and "landscape" on the Flickr platform between 2004 and 2014. They found in certain time periods prior to the peak of extreme weather events, these words showed the weather getting worse in the locations where they happened.
Tkachenko says this metadata can be used as "social sensors" to provide accurate warnings for weather events, in conjunction with physical sensors. "The opportunities represented by these new data sources are truly exciting as they can help to protect homes, save lives, and design more resilient cities!" she notes.
From University of Warwick
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