Quantifying people’s experience during flood events with implications for hazard risk communication

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 16; no. 1; p. e0244801
• Main Authors: Tkachenko, Nataliya, Procter, Rob, Jarvis, Stephen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 07.01.2021; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Biology and Life Sciences; Communication; Computer and Information Sciences; Deep Learning; Digital media; Drift; Earth Sciences; Ecology and Environmental Sciences; Flooding; Floods; Floods - classification; Human mechanics; Language; Life Change Events; Mobility; Navigation behavior; Psychological aspects; Risk communication; Semantics; Social aspects; Social Media - trends; Social networks; Social Sciences; Tags; Turing, Alan; Words (language); United Kingdom; United Kingdom > UK
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244801

Semantic drift is a well-known concept in distributional semantics, which is used to demonstrate gradual, long-term changes in meanings and sentiments of words and is largely detectable by studying the composition of large corpora. In our previous work, which used ontological relationships between words and phrases, we established that certain kinds of semantic micro-changes can be found in social media emerging around natural hazard events, such as floods. Our previous results confirmed that semantic drift in social media can be used to for early detection of floods and to increase the volume of ‘useful’ geo-referenced data for event monitoring. In this work we use deep learning in order to determine whether images associated with ‘semantically drifted’ social media tags reflect changes in crowd navigation strategies during floods. Our results show that alternative tags can be used to differentiate naïve and experienced crowds witnessing flooding of various degrees of severity.