A global database of historic and real-time flood events based on social media

Early event detection and response can significantly reduce the societal impact of floods. Currently, early warning systems rely on gauges, radar data, models and informal local sources. However, the scope and reliability of these systems are limited. Recently, the use of social media for detecting disasters has shown promising results, especially for earthquakes. Here, presented is a new database for detecting floods in real-time on a global scale using Twitter.

The method was developed using 88 million tweets, from which we derived over 10,000 flood events (i.e., flooding occurring in a country or first order administrative subdivision) across 176 countries in 11 languages in just over four years. Using strict parameters, validation shows that approximately 90% of the events were correctly detected.

In countries where the first official language is included, the algorithm detected 63% of events in NatCatSERVICE disaster database at admin 1 level. Moreover, a large number of flood events not included in NatCatSERVICE were detected.