Details zur Publikation

Kategorie Textpublikation
Referenztyp Zeitschriften
DOI 10.1088/3033-4942/ae2e37
Lizenz creative commons licence
Titel (primär) Drought perceived impacts via text mining of social media
Autor Wang, J.; Castelletti, A.; de Brito, M.M. ORCID logo ; Pernici, B.
Quelle Environmental Research: Water
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
Department SUSOZ
Band/Volume 1
Heft 4
Seite von art. 045007
Sprache englisch
Topic T5 Future Landscapes
Supplements Supplement 1
Keywords drought; natural hazards; LLM; NLP; text mining; social media
Abstract Droughts have complex, multifaceted consequences for society, yet drought indices often focus on drought’s physical characteristics, overlooking its societal impacts, while impact studies are usually published several months later or annually. In this context, social media provides a unique lens into public perceived impacts, capturing first-hand experience that conventional monitoring approaches might miss in a timely way. We investigate the consequences of the 2022 drought in Italy by analyzing Twitter posts. Leveraging large language models (LLMs), we classify the reported impacts into seven impact categories and analyze their spatio-temporal patterns. We observe that public discourse on drought is primarily concentrated in Northern Italy, where economic activity relies more heavily on agriculture and industry compared with the rest of the country. Discourse across all sectors peaks in summer, indicating a collective increase in concern across sectors. We find strong associations between the tweet-derived impacts and socioeconomic indicators such as crop prices and hydropower generation. Yet, Twitter data is weakly aligned with the standardized precipitation index. These findings suggest that meteorological conditions alone do not directly drive public response; rather, public perception aligns more closely with the tangible consequences of drought. We demonstrate the potential of using social media to enhance drought monitoring by capturing near-real-time, ground-level public responses. As such, it serves as a valuable complement to physical drought indicators and traditional statistical sources, supporting more informed impact assessment and management strategies.
dauerhafte UFZ-Verlinkung https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=31769
Wang, J., Castelletti, A., de Brito, M.M., Pernici, B. (2025):
Drought perceived impacts via text mining of social media
Environmental Research: Water 1 (4), art. 045007 10.1088/3033-4942/ae2e37