We have analysed the use of social networks
en este caso de Twitter, particularly on Twitter
for managing and monitoring in real time
even predicting economic impact
of natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy.
The main conclusion is that the use of social networks
in natural disasters is correlated
to the economic harm in dollars
that those disasters had in the US, and particularly Hurricane Sandy.
per capita activity on social networks
is correlated with economic harm per capita
in the areas where that activity is produced.
There is a double function: we can monitor on real time
the economic impact of a natural disaster
and then there is a second ex post function
so as to say when the hurricane has gone
so that the agencies can get different news
or complete what they have.
In the article we have analysed
a natural disaster such as Hurricane Sandy
but we have also proved that it is useful for earthquakes,
floodings, storms and tornadoes, for instance.
In this study we have used
all the tweets geolocalised in the US
when the hurricane Sandy was going on,
around hundreds of millions of tweets.
We have particularly focused on
New York and New Jersey states.
There was a collaboration with NICTA in Australia,
and the University of California in San Diego.
We think that climate change is going to produce
more and more of these natural disasters
so the use of social networks
is going to enable complementary information
of these happenings that will be more and more frequent.
We are also doing another kind of research
where we are trying to see the relation between
activity on social networks
and that allegedly climate change that is going to affect us in the future.