Twitter to help in real-time flood map generation!

As a flooding event is still in progress, real-time information on its extent and the population affected is difficult to obtain, putting rescue crews and associated agencies in a difficult position in terms of planning and decision making. A joint study carried out by two Dutch organizations - Deltares and Floodtags - aims in developing twitter-based real-time flood maps. The project is considered a proof of concept and was presented at the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union taking place in Vienna these days.

Following the conventional way, flood maps are being derived from post-flooding sources such as satellite and areal images, ground observations, hydrodynamic models and post-flooding flood marks. But the use of social media during a flooding event may prove a very useful resource of real-time information which can then be used to compile real-time flood extent maps. A recent example of the social media power is found in Jakarta, the Twitter capital of the world, where flood-related tweets reached a peak of 900 tweets a minute during the catastrophic flooding events of February 2015. Despite the uncertainties involved in the quality of the provided information, a great amount of the specific tweets contained information on the depth of water and the location. Provided that this cloud of information, is carefully filtered, evaluated and enriched, it could become a powerful tool in the hands of scientists and disaster managers 

Upon full implementation, the method will be able to create real-time maps, based on people's tweets "giving crisis managers a better view of what is actually happening during a flood so they can make more effective decisions: the right measures at the right time, in the right place", according to Dirk Eilander's statement, a flood expert in Deltares. The specific flood maps are expected to be used post-flooding, in the calibration of hydrodynamic models as well as by insurance companies in getting information about damaged areas.  

Watch the live press conference about this new tool here!