Disaster management 2.0: A real-time disaster damage assessment model based on mobile social media data—A case study of Weibo (Chinese Twitter)

In the era of big data, could popularized social media platforms assist with urban damage monitoring and assessment and aid disaster rescue? Before, during, and after such disasters, citizens might disseminate disaster-related text and data through social media platforms. Therefore, social media is both a powerful and promising tool for disaster response management, including enhancing situation awareness, promoting emergency information flow, predicting disasters and coordinating rescue efforts. This study develops a framework for real-time urban disaster damage monitoring and assessment. Social media texts sent during and after the Tianjin explosion and Typhoon Nepartak (i.e., a manmade and natural large-scale disaster, respectively) disasters are collected and constitute the database. The real-time monitoring of physical damage and sentiment provides the main categories of damage and damage scale information. In this study, a physical assessment provides a detailed quantity of the losses according to the different types of damage sustained over time. One pronounced innovation is the study's comprehensive perspective, which facilitates a thorough analysis of both the emotional and physical damage in real-time scenarios. In addition, a quantity evaluation of physical damage is performed. The findings suggest that social media can be used for rapid damage evaluations as the real-time and huge information flow contains the aforementioned damage categories, damage scale and damage quantity messages. The social media database damage assessment model presented in this study can enhance disaster situation awareness and rescue operations.