Monitoring of Drought Awareness from Google Trends: A Case Study of the 2011–17 California Drought

Kam, Jonghun; Stowers, Kimberly; Kim, Sungyoon

doi:10.1175/wcas-d-18-0085.1

Cited by 54 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…While active social monitoring systems are often used as a tool of risk communication during the disaster emergence (Wang and Zhuang, 2017), they can be subject to misinformation (Wang and Zhuang, 2018). Whereas passive social monitoring systems provide observational data that can more accurately depict the growth and decay patterns of awareness of free agents during disaster emergency (Kam et al, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…They have been used in previous studies to predict stock prices (Preis et al, 2013), to monitor disease outbreaks (Carneiro and Mylonakis, 2009), and to understand public perception of climate change (Anderegg and Goldsmith, 2014). In recent years, Google Trends data have been used to validate simulated drought awareness (Gonzales and Ajami, 2017) and to investigate the potential triggers and dynamic patterns of drought awareness during the 2011-2017 California drought (Kam et al, 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…One limitation is related to noise search activities that are defined as search activities using search terms including a common word (herein, drought) but not relevant to actual drought events. For example, Beyoncé released "Love Drought" on 24 April 2016 and it drove additional public search activities using the common term, "drought", during the on-going California drought (Kam et al, 2019). However, actual severe drought conditions increase the public interest or awareness about drought dramatically and consequently reduces the relative importance of these noise search activities irrelevant to the 2011-2017 California drought (Kam et al, 2019).…”

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Spatiotemporal patterns of US drought awareness

2019

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Drought is a creeping climatological phenomenon with persistent precipitation deficits. Unlike rapid onset natural hazards such as floods and wildfires, the intangible and gradual characteristics of drought cause a lack of social response during the onset. The level of awareness of a local drought increases rapidly through mass media reports and online information searching activities when the drought reaches its peak severity. This high level of local drought awareness drives concerns for water shortage and support for water policy. However, spatiotemporal patterns of national-scale drought awareness have never been studied due to constraints imposed by time-consuming and costly survey data collection and surveys' limited sample sizes. Here, we present the national-scale study to reveal the spatiotemporal patterns of drought awareness over the contiguous United States (CONUS) using Google Trends data and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Results show that the first two PC modes can explain 48% (38% for PC1 and 10% for PC2) of the total variance of state-level drought awareness. We find that the PC1 mode relates to a national pattern of drought awareness across the CONUS. The spatiotemporal patterns further imply that residents in the Northeastern US region are the most aware of the emergence of drought, regardless of the geographic location of the occurrence. The results illustrate how big data, such as search query and social media data, can help develop an effective and efficient plan for drought mitigation in the future.

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Spatiotemporal patterns of US drought awareness

2019

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“…There is one pilot study based on the 2014 California drought that explored Twitter data as well as Google trend data to obtain information for emergency management, in which they discovered that government policy during the drought influenced Twitter activity significantly, while prominent discussion could raise public awareness towards the drought [60]. However, additional follow-up studies have not looked into Twitter data in relation to water management [61,62].…”

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confidence: 99%

Digital Surveillance for Monitoring Environmental Health Threats: A Case Study Capturing Public Opinion from Twitter about the 2019 Chennai Water Crisis

Xiong

Hswen

Naslund

2020

IJERPH

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Globally, water scarcity has become a common challenge across many regions. Digital surveillance holds promise for monitoring environmental threats to population health due to severe drought. The 2019 Chennai water crisis in India resulted in severe disruptions to social order and daily life, with local residents suffering due to water shortages. This case study explored public opinion captured through the Twitter social media platform, and whether this information could help local governments with emergency response. Sentiment analysis and topic modeling were used to explore public opinion through Twitter during the 2019 Chennai water crisis. The latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) method identified topics that were most frequently discussed. A naïve Tweet classification method was built, and Twitter posts (called tweets) were allocated to identified topics. Topics were ranked, and corresponding emotions were calculated. A cross-correlation was performed to examine the relationship between online posts about the water crisis and actual rainfall, determined by precipitation levels. During the Chennai water crisis, Twitter users posted content that appeared to show anxiety about the impact of the drought, and also expressed concerns about the government response. Twitter users also mentioned causes for the drought and potential sustainable solutions, which appeared to be mainly positive in tone. Discussion on Twitter can reflect popular public opinion related to emerging environmental health threats. Twitter posts appear viable for informing crisis management as real-time data can be collected and analyzed. Governments and public health officials should adjust their policies and public communication by leveraging online data sources, which could inform disaster prevention measures.

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“…These conditions were accompanied by unprecedented state-level political actions, considerable news media coverage, and elevated public awareness, which in turn led to high levels of drought saliency, or societal prominence, and which has been linked to water conservation Ajami 2017, Gonzales andAjami 2017b). There are currently no standard metrics for quantifying drought saliency; researchers have used a variety of proxies such as news media coverage or internet search frequency, both which provide insights into peak events and periods of heightened awareness (Quesnel and Ajami 2017, Treuer et al 2017, Gonzales and Ajami 2017b, Roby et al 2018, Kam et al 2019.…”

Section: Study Location and Drought Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shifting landscapes: decoupled urban irrigation and greenness patterns during severe drought

Quesnel

Ajami

Marx

2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Urban outdoor water conservation and efficiency offer high potential for demand-side management, but irrigation, greenness, and climate interlinks must be better understood to design optimal policies. To identify paired transitions during drought, we matched parcel-level water use data from smart, dedicated irrigation meters with high-spatial resolution, multispectral aerial imagery. We examined changes across 72 non-residential parcels using potable or recycled water for large landscape irrigation over four biennial summers (2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016) that encompassed a historic drought in California. We found that despite little change in irrigation levels during the first few years of the drought, parcel greenness deteriorated. Between summers 2010 and 2014, average parcel greenness decreased −61% for potable water irrigators and −56% for recycled water irrigators, providing evidence that vegetation could not reach its vigor from wetter, cooler years as the drought intensified with abnormally high temperatures. Between summers 2014-2016 as drought severity lessened, irrigation rates decreased significantly in line with high drought saliency, but greenness rebounded ubiquitously, on average +110% for potable water irrigators and +62% for recycled water irrigators, demonstrating climate-driven vegetation recovery as evaporation and plant evapotranspiration rates decreased. Transitions were similar for customers with both potable and recycled water; vegetation changes were dominated by the overarching climatic regime. As irrigation cannot always overcome drought conditions, which will become more severe under climate change, to maintain vegetation health, utilities and urban planners should consider the tradeoffs between providing green spaces and water scarcity. This includes evaluating the roles of climate-appropriate landscaping and adaptive reallocation of potable and recycled water resources to enhance water security. By addressing emerging themes in urban water management through analysis of data from forthcoming water metering and aerial imagery technologies, this research provides a unique perspective on water use, greenness, and drought linkages.

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Monitoring of Drought Awareness from Google Trends: A Case Study of the 2011–17 California Drought

Cited by 54 publications

References 33 publications

Spatiotemporal patterns of US drought awareness

Spatiotemporal patterns of US drought awareness

Digital Surveillance for Monitoring Environmental Health Threats: A Case Study Capturing Public Opinion from Twitter about the 2019 Chennai Water Crisis

Shifting landscapes: decoupled urban irrigation and greenness patterns during severe drought

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