Using Social Media to Predict Disaster Resilience
Social media is used to monitor and predict all kinds of social, economic, political and health-related behaviors these days. Could social media also help identify more disaster resilient communities? Recent empirical research reveals that social capital is the most important driver of disaster resilience; more so than economic and material resources. To this end, might a community’s social media footprint indicate how resilience it is to disasters? After all, “when extreme events at the scale of Hurricane Sandy happen, they leave an unquestionable mark on social media activity” (1). Could that mark be one of resilience?
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Phi Beta Iota: Below is skewed by the impact of urban dwellers on the country's over-all twitter “vibrancy. The gray countries “do not exist” in twitter land and that is our core point — a cell phone is a like a cow, in the digital era to not be connected is to not exist. That is the human center of gravity for collective progress.