The potential for social media analysis to assess and optimize water management

Khalid K Osman (1) , Florian Barbaro (2) , Andy Skumanich (2)

1 Stanford University
2 Innov8ai

An essential need for human well-being is access to adequate potable water. There are many challenges developing in the delivery and management of water, especially in the face of global climate change. With increasing severities of drought, social inequities, and infrastructure chal- lenges, the need for concerted water management has become essential. Social and community engagement is now necessary. One of the key tools for societal engagement is the use of So- cial Media, and water concerns must certainly become part of this conversation. Instead, this engagement mode is underutilized and not adequately developed or analyzed. There are multiple aspects of using social media for water management which range from customer sentiment (such as direct feedback about water quality), to more regional or global aspects of water anxiety. The former can be part of a water utility’s engagement with its customer base, and social media provides a useful (although underutilized) path of communi- cation. However, the latter aspect of regional water concerns is of increasing importance given the developing global water supply issues. We focus on the latter.

Mots clés: Water Management; water anxiety; Water utilities; Spherical k-means; Clustering

Domaines: Sciences de l'information et de la communication

Khalid K Osman, Florian Barbaro, Andy Skumanich. The potential for social media analysis to assess and optimize water management. 9th International Conference on Computational Social Science IC2S2, Jul 2023, Copenhagen, Denmark. ⟨hal-04084263⟩