Detecting Real Disasters through Twitter

The problem with “Tweets” is that sometimes it is unclear whether the words are actually what writers want to express. For example, a person called Anna K tweeted: On plus side look at the sky last night it was ablaze. The word “ABLAZE” here does not really mean “on fire.” It metaphorically suggests that the sky is so bright as if it is on fire, but it is certainly not a real disaster. Humans can easily identify the real meaning of this tweet. Our goal is to build a statistical model to allow a computer to predict if a Tweet is about an emergency. It is a meaningful and quite useful project since it will help agencies using Twitter to learn about disasters more quickly and efficiently.