Analyzing spatial data from Twitter during a disaster

Social media can be an invaluable help in a mass emergency, but the information handling can be challenging. One major concern is identifying posts related to the area, or pinning them on a map. This exploratory study analyzes the spatial data coming with tweets during two natural disasters, an earthquake and a hurricane. Geo-tagged tweets confirm to be a small fraction of all tweets and disasters within a limited region appear to be a niche topic in the whole stream. The results can help researchers and practitioners in the design of tools to identify these messages.© 2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works