A Visual Insight Into Tweeting Activity Before and During Natural Disasters

Abstract

Big data provided by social media has been increasingly used in various fields of research including disaster studies and emergency management. Effective data visualization plays a central role in generating meaningful insight from big data. However, big data visualization has been a challenge due to the high complexity and high dimensionality of it. The purpose of this study is to examine how the number and spatial distribution of tweets changed on the day Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Houston, Texas. For this purpose, this study analyzed the change in tweeting activity between the Friday of Hurricane Harvey and a typical Friday before the event.