01/01/2018 – 12/31/2019. RAPID: The Changing Roles of Social Media in Disaster Resilience: The Case of Hurricane Harvey. National Science Foundation #1762600, $199,989
09/01/2016 – 02/29/2021. IBSS-L: Understanding Social and Geographical Disparities in Disaster Resilience Through the Use of Social Media. National Science Foundation #1620451, $834,585
In addition, ICAR team members lead funded research related to social media and disaster resilience.
RAPID: The Changing Roles of Social Media in Disaster Resilience: The Case of Hurricane Harvey.
Understanding the changing roles and effects of social media use in disaster events, such as Hurricane Harvey in Texas, will help reduce vulnerability and improve resilience of communities to these disaster events. Hurricane Harvey made landfall on August 25, 2017 near Rockport, Texas as a category-4 hurricane. It lingered over the Houston area and dumped over 50-inches of rainfall, causing widespread flooding and damages in the region. This unprecedented disastrous event reveals many issues, including inadequate flood warning and slow response by agencies. At the same time, a new phenomenon emerged during the Harvey event: many residents in the Houston area resorted to social media to call for rescue from flooded homes when the 911 system was overloaded and could not be connected. This changing use of social media marks Harvey as one of the very first disastrous events in which social media have played an important role in facilitating fast-responding rescue missions. The overarching research question is: how effective is social media in enhancing resilience through its new role in response and rescue, and do we see an increase or decrease in the geographical and social disparities of social media use that may have affected the outcome and the resilience of individuals and communities? This project collects time-sensitive Twitter data and online surveys of individuals and organizations in the flood-affected communities in the Houston region so that they can be used to address this key question.
To view the full abstract, please visit the NSF website.
IBSS-L: Understanding Social and Geographical Disparities in Disaster Resilience Through the Use of Social Media.
This interdisciplinary research project will examine whether social and geographical disparities exist during the four phrases of emergency management (mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery). The investigators will use multiple perspectives and scales to address the research questions, including analysis at the community, individual, and organizational scales. Findings from this project will provide valuable insights into the interplay among regional disparities, individual social networks and behavior, and governmental/organizational policies. This project will expand knowledge of whether social media use may serve to overcome or further deepen the social and geographical disparities in each phase of emergency management. The project will enhance understanding of how to conduct efficient mining of social media data in order to produce useful and valid scientific information, thereby advancing both social science and information science research by developing and testing algorithms that can be used to mine noisy and imperfect data from sources like Twitter. The knowledge gained from this project will help develop strategies to reduce disparities, create effective social media campaigns and emergency management outreach, and promote resilience to disasters. The methods used in this project will be applicable to study other disasters in other regions.
To view the full abstract, please visit the NSF website.