A Multi-Scale Study of US Drought Awareness
<p>Big data have meaningful, but hidden, information about our society's behavior and response to influential events. Particularly, water-related disasters, such as drought and flood, cause rapid increase in public awareness/interest when they already happen. Despite the improved prediction skill, lack of timely social response to these disasters exacerbates economic losses and fatalities.&#160;</p><p>In this presentation, I will introduce the utility of Google Trends data in monitoring and understanding the dynamic patterns of social response to drought at the state and national level. The first part of this presentation will show a case study of the dynamics of Californian awareness during the 2011&#8211;17 California Drought. The second part of this seminar will show a spatiotemporal analysis of US national drought awareness among the 49 US states. In closing, I will discuss the role of big data in transforming our society to a water-related disaster-ready environment.</p>