1. Understanding social behavior and response to water-related disasters

Big data have hidden, but meaningful, information about our society's behavior and response to influential events. For example, water-related disasters, such as drought and flood, cause rapid increase in public awareness/interest when they happen. Despite the skillful prediction, lack of timely social response to these disaster exacerbates their adverse effects including fatalities and economic losses.

To transform our society to a water-related disaster-ready environment, better understanding of social dynamics (potential triggers and growth and decay patterns of public interest/awareness) is warranted. Lately, big data from information search activities in the cyberspace provide high-resolution records with the unprecedented sample size.

Our research group aims to advance the current knowledge of not only the current prediction skill but also the social response during the emergency of natural/human disasters related to water resources. The following figures are from the previous research articles at the state- and national level analyses of drought risk and awareness using Google Trends.

1. Drought

• Weather, Climate, and Society 2019

• Palgrave Communications (2019)

2. Earthquake

• Humanit. Soc. Sci. Commun. (2020)