A new study used Twitter posts to access the frequency of nuisance flooding, finding it's more common than official metrics might suggest.
The study focusing on flood levels along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts found that 22 counties experience nuisance flooding at water levels much lower than what an official gauge would register as a flood. Cities in the counties include New York, Miami and Boston, which have a combined population of over 13 million people.
Flooded street on Sept. 29, 2015. in Miami Beach, Florida, which engaged in a five-year, $400 million storm water pump program.To conduct their analysis, the scientists turned to Twitter. In this case, Twitter was useful because the 3,700 miles of the East and Gulf Coasts have only about 132 tidal gauge stations. This means it's difficult to measure the impact of changing water levels on specific areas.
Given the geographic reach of Twitter, as well as the volume and location-specific nature of tweets, the platform can be used to track "nuisance coastal flooding that is both more regular and less consequential," the researchers said. Because the consequences of this type of flood are annoying rather than deadly, they're not always measured or recorded.
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