A study of wildfires by researchers at Waterloo Engineering reveals a risk of costly over-reaction by emergency responders who monitor social media posts.
While posts by the public have been shown to help firefighters spring into action faster, a detailed analysis of wildfires in California suggests social media signals can be a double-edged sword.
“A post that contains useful location or situational information may help speed up response, but highly emotional posts with limited informational content can also amplify urgency and unintentionally distort how resources are allocated,” said Dr. Garros Gong, who led the study as a PhD student in management science and engineering.
To help emergency agencies deal with what they call the “visibility-efficiency paradox,” the researchers developed a tool that tracks social media posts during the early stages of an emergency and quantifies its seriousness by weighing factors including population and location.
“The key lesson is not that agencies should ignore social media, which is now part of the operating environment,” said Gong, who was supervised by Dr. Stan Dimitrov, a professor of management science and engineering. “The real challenge is how to govern the attention pressure it creates.”
Go to The wildfire paradox: How social media quickens response but strains resources for the full story.