Monitoring of Drought Awareness from Google Trends: A Case Study of the 2011–17 California Drought

Abstract

AbstractThis study introduces ?Google Trends? as a social data source in monitoring and modeling the dynamics of drought awareness during the 2011?17 California drought. In this study, drought awareness is defined and operationalized as the relative search interest activities within California, using the search term ?drought? from Google Trends. First, the 2011?17 California drought is characterized in the duration?intensity curve with other historical California droughts for comparative purposes, using the 12-month standard precipitation index data (1895?2017). Second, the potential triggers of the peaks of drought awareness during the 2011?17 California drought are investigated through Google Trends and Google Search. The Google Trends data show that the first peak of drought awareness occurred when the drought condition reached its peak and the governor declared the drought emergency (January 2014). The other peaks in August 2014, April 2015, and January 2017 are related to public interest in drought recovery driven by the forecast of the strong El Niño winter of 2014/15, the governor?s issue of water use rules, and California floods in early 2017, respectively. Last, a power-law decay model of drought awareness is fitted to the Google Trends data. According to the fitted power-law model, Californians remained interested in drought after the social trigger?related peaks longer than they did after the natural trigger?related peaks. The findings of this study suggest that it is necessary to develop a more realistic social dynamic modeling for communities that can respond to natural and human triggers and capture interactions with awareness of related disasters.