Social Media Data Analysis and Feedback for Advanced Disaster Risk Management

Social media are more than just a one-way communication channel. Data can be collected, analyzed and contextualized to support disaster risk management. However, disaster management agencies typically use such added-value information to support only their own decisions. A feedback loop between contextualized information and data suppliers would result in various advantages. First, it could facilitate the near real-time communication of early warnings derived from social media, linked to other sources of information. Second, it could support the staff of aid organizations during response operations. Based on the example of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma we show how filtered, geolocated Tweets can be used for rapid damage assessment. We claim that the next generation of big data analyses will have to generate actionable information resulting from the application of advanced analytical techniques. These applications could include the provision of social media-based training data for algorithms designed to forecast actual cyclone impacts or new socio-economic validation metrics for seasonal climate forecasts.