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Natural disasters are significantly impact human life and urban infrastructure (e.g., Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2007; Graif, 2016; Gasper et al., 2011; Pelling & Uitto, 2001; Yum, 2020b; Yum, 2021a). Natural disasters exert critical impacts on almost every part of the world. In 2020, there were a total of 416 natural disaster events worldwide (Statista, 2021a). Developing natural disaster policies is therefore a top priority for governments to save their citizens’ life and property (e.g., El-Masri & Tipple, 2002; Javadinejad et al., 2019).
Governments and world organizations have established many natural disaster policies and public agencies to cope with natural disasters (e.g., Bruce, 1994; Songwathana, 2018). For example, United Nations (UN) established the World Meteorological Organization for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology, and geophysics to predict natural disasters (Obasi, 1994). The European Commission (EC) developed the Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre to provide European Union Member States and the disaster risk management community with an online repository of natural disaster-related data, research and project results, and access to a range of networks and partnerships (European Commission, 2021).
Scholars also have explored how natural disasters play an important role in their country and economies (e.g., Abolghasemi et al., 2006; Miller & Goidel, 2009). For example, Kunreuther et al. (2008) show that hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma kill over 1,500 people and result in compensation payments of USD180 billion. Lee et al. (2017) calculate the maximum annual damage costs from natural disasters through 2060 to be US$20.9 billion, which is about 1.03% of future Korean gross domestic product (GDP) by employing a balanced panel data spanning 2001–2012 for all 16 metropolitan cities and provinces in Korea.
Some scholars have examined big data analyses for social network services (SNS: SNS are online platforms that people use to build social networks with others) pertaining to natural disasters with the development of information technology systems after the 2010s (e.g., Akter & Wamba, 2019; Yu et al., 2018; Yum, 2020a). For instance, Earle (2010) reports that Twitter messages and their geographic distribution can be a useful supplement to instrument-based estimates of location and magnitude for earthquakes. Lacassin et al. (2020) show that Twitter provides a very fast building of knowledge via an effective exchange of information and useful discussion between scholars and the public based on two 2018 earthquake-related events.
Yu et al. (2018) argue that the era of big data has undoubtedly suggested new options for natural disaster analyses, mainly because of the various possibilities based on 149 articles from 101 journals. Akter and Wamba (2019) report that the era of big data analyses presents new options for natural disaster management based on 76 articles across 66 journals.