Community-based Behavioral Understanding of Crisis Activity Concerns using Social Media Data: A Study on the 2023 Canadian Wildfires in New York City
Bibliographic record
Abstract
New York City (NYC) topped the global chart for the worst air pollution in June 2023, owing to the wildfire smoke drifting in from Canada. This unprecedented situation caused significant travel disruptions and shifts in traditional activity patterns of NYC residents. This study utilized large-scale social media data to study different crisis activity concerns (i.e., evacuation, staying indoors, shopping, and recreational activities among others) in the emergence of the 2023 Canadian wildfire smoke in NYC. In this regard, one week (June 02 through June 09, 2023) geotagged Twitter data from NYC were retrieved and used in the analysis. The tweets were processed using advanced text classification techniques and later integrated with national databases such as Social Security Administration data, Census, and American Community Survey. Finally, a model has been developed to make community inferences of different activity concerns in a major wildfire. The findings suggest, during wildfires, females are less likely to engage in discussions about evacuation, trips for medical, social, or recreational purposes, and commuting for work, likely influenced by workplaces maintaining operations despite poor air quality. There were also racial disparities in these discussions, with Asians being more likely than Hispanics to discuss evacuation and work commute, and African Americans being less likely to discuss social and recreational activities. Additionally, individuals from low-income neighborhoods and non-higher education students expressed fewer concerns about evacuation. This study provides valuable insights for policymakers, emergency planners, and public health officials, aiding them in formulating targeted communication strategies and equitable emergency response plans.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".