Social Media can Forecast Economic Impact of Disasters Including COVID-19 Pandemic

Social media should be used to chart the economic impact and recovery of businesses in countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research published in Nature Communications. University of Bristol scientists describe a 'real time' method accurately trialled across three global natural disasters which could be used to reliably forecast the financial impact of the current global health crisis.

Traditional economic recovery estimates, such as surveys and interviews, are usually costly, time-consuming and do not scale-up well. However, researchers from Bristol's School of Engineering Maths and Department of Civil Engineering show they were able to accurately estimate the downtime and recovery of small businesses in countries affected by three different natural hazards using aggregated social media data.

The method relies on the assumption that businesses tend to publish more social media posts when they are open and fewer when they are closed, hence analysing the aggregated posting activity of a group of businesses over time it is possible to infer when they are open or closed.

Using data from the public Facebook posts of local businesses collected before, during and after three natural disasters comprising the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Nepal, the 2017 Chiapas earthquake in Mexico, and the 2017 hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the team charted the number of smaller urban businesses who were closed and then were able to measure their recovery post-event. The team validated their analysis using field surveys, official reports, Facebook surveys, Facebook posts text analysis and other studies available in literature.

Importantly, the framework works in 'real time' without the need for text analysis which can be largely dependent on language, culture or semantic analysis and can be applied to any size area or type of natural disaster, in developed and developing countries, allowing local governments to better target the distribution of resources.

Dr Simini, Senior Lecturer and the study's lead author explains: "The challenge of nowcasting the effect of natural hazards such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and pandemics on assets, people and society has never been more timely than ever for assessing the ability of countries to recover from extreme events.

"Often, small to medium-sized businesses slip through the net of traditional monitoring process of recovery. We noticed in areas struck by natural hazard events that not all areas and populations react in the same way."

Dr Flavia De Luca, lead author and Senior Lecturer in Bristol's Department of Civil Engineering, added: "We had the idea of supporting post-emergency deployment of resources after a natural hazard event using public Facebook posts of businesses to measure how a specific region is recovering after the event. It was amazing to find out that the approach was providing information on the recovery in 'real time'.

"We would like to test the method to measure the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic."

Robert Eyre, Flavia De Luca, Filippo Simini.
Social media usage reveals recovery of small businesses after natural hazard events.
Nature Communications, 1629, 2020. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-15405-7.

Most Popular Now

Philips Foundation 2024 Annual Report: E…

Marking its tenth anniversary, Philips Foundation released its 2024 Annual Report, highlighting a year in which the Philips Foundation helped provide access to quality healthcare for 46.5 million people around...

New AI Transforms Radiology with Speed, …

A first-of-its-kind generative AI system, developed in-house at Northwestern Medicine, is revolutionizing radiology - boosting productivity, identifying life-threatening conditions in milliseconds and offering a breakthrough solution to the global radiologist...

Scientists Argue for More FDA Oversight …

An agile, transparent, and ethics-driven oversight system is needed for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to balance innovation with patient safety when it comes to artificial intelligence-driven medical...

Giving Doctors an AI-Powered Head Start …

Detection of melanoma and a range of other skin diseases will be faster and more accurate with a new artificial intelligence (AI) powered tool that analyses multiple imaging types simultaneously...

New Research Finds Specific Learning Str…

If data used to train artificial intelligence models for medical applications, such as hospitals across the Greater Toronto Area, differs from the real-world data, it could lead to patient harm...

AI Agents for Oncology

Clinical decision-making in oncology is challenging and requires the analysis of various data types - from medical imaging and genetic information to patient records and treatment guidelines. To effectively support...

Patients say "Yes..ish" to the…

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to be integrated in healthcare, a new multinational study involving Aarhus University sheds light on how dental patients really feel about its growing role in...

'AI Scientist' Suggests Combin…

An 'AI scientist', working in collaboration with human scientists, has found that combinations of cheap and safe drugs - used to treat conditions such as high cholesterol and alcohol dependence...

Brains vs. Bytes: Study Compares Diagnos…

A University of Maine study compared how well artificial intelligence (AI) models and human clinicians handled complex or sensitive medical cases. The study published in the Journal of Health Organization...

Start-ups in the Spotlight at MEDICA 202…

17 - 20 November 2025, Düsseldorf, Germany. MEDICA, the leading international trade fair and platform for healthcare innovations, will once again confirm its position as the world's number one hotspot for...