To fight wildfires, look to social media, UMD researcher says
University of Maryland researcher Zihui Ma developed an AI-powered method to track wildfires using social media posts in real-time. According to Assistant Professor Yuki Miura: "This is great news for residents who know there is some risk but also a solution that could save them.” By analyzing Twitter data from 2020 California, Oregon and Washington fires, Ma categorized 151,682 posts into topics like health impact, damage, and evacuation.
