Global search trends related to natural disasters

Global search trends of disaster topics ‘Flooding’ (blue) and ‘Hurricanes’ (red) over the past 5 years. These data are from Google search trends.

Relative popularity of natural disaster search queries appears to be increasing globally.

Examining search data and trends may reveal some interesting phenomena. It reflects what is popular / of interest in parts of society that are online. By studying these search patterns relating to a phenomenon, we are studying people trying to make sense of a phenomenon. It perhaps illustrates what is fundamentally different between the natural and social sciences yet connected at the same time.

These data can be segmented by location and proxy’s for gender and age. Bearing in mind some studies indicate 46% of the world’s population are not online or don’t have a smartphone.

There is some published research to suggest ‘loss of smell and taste’ could have been picked up as a symptom of Covid-19 in search log data for example, before it was official communicated. Social media may provide an early warning in some cases (humans as sensors – citizen science) of natural disasters before official data is recorded and analysed, or satellite images updated. These data may not be fair, in the sense poorer countries may not be as technologically connected so are underrepresented in search log data and perhaps machine learning datasets.