# Use of Social Media Data in Disaster Management: A Survey
## 8 Applications
### Disaster Management Types  
Disaster management types refer to groups of disasters, which are classified based on the root cause of the disaster. According to the International Disaster Database (EMDAT) [66], there are two main groups of disasters: natural disasters and technological disasters.  
* Natural disasters are natural events that emerge from natural processes or phenomena and may cause loss of people's lives and property. Natural disasters are further divided into six sub-groups: biological, geophysical, climatological, hydrological, meteorological, and extra-terrestrial disasters. Some examples of natural hazards are floods, landslides, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
* Technological disasters are disasters that are a consequence of technological processes or human activities. Some examples of technological disasters are industrial and transport accidents.  
Table 7 lists the applications of social media data in disaster management. We identify the sub-classes of both disaster management phase and disaster type for the application of social media proposed by each publication. Consequently, this reveals the current coverage of the existing applications of social media in disaster management.  
The authors of [16] proposed a novel approach to viewing social media data as a human sensor and using social media to observe technological disasters (sightings of oil) and natural disasters (earthquakes and air quality). Geo-locations were extracted and used as a boundary for the prediction of an oil spill. The authors of [39; 40] analysed Twitter data to identify public behaviour patterns from both spatial and temporal perspectives during a natural disaster--Hurricane Sandy. An investigation of the emergency information distribution using social media during an emergency event was performed in [3]. This work analysed the social media stream during the 2012 Beijing rainstorm by using classification and location models. The authors of [44] analysed tweets about Hurricane Sandy to find temporal trends using a classifier based on logistic regression. The applications of social media mentioned in Table 7 were proposed to address problems in a different phase of disaster management. The work in [16; 39; 40; 44] addresses problems in the preparedness phase, while the outcomes in [3; 16; 39; 40; 44] are utilised for the response phase. The applications outlined in [39; 40] are used for the recovery phase.  
It can be seen that most research has focused on the application of social media data for natural disasters rather than technological disasters. However, the approaches presented in most of these works can be applied to multiple phases of disaster management. Interestingly, the response phase is the most popular aspect in which to exploit social media data, while there are no available publications that are applicable to the mitigation phase.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**References**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Application**} \\ \cline{2-3}  & **Disaster Management Phase** & **Disaster Management Type** \\ \hline
[16] & Preparedness, Response & Technological, Natural \\
[39] & Preparedness, Response, & Natural disaster \\
[40] & Recovery & Natural disaster \\
[3] & Preparedness, Response, & Natural disaster \\
[44] & Recovery & Natural disaster \\
[3] & Response & Natural disaster \\
[44] & Preparedness, Response & Natural disaster \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 7: Applications of social media data in disaster management.