New collaboration aims to improve availability of real-time hazard impact data

To date, the real-time impact data that is needed to effectively forecast and monitor geological hazard events has been unavailable or incomplete. The FloodTags platform aims to fill this gap by using large language models (LLMs) to extract real-time and historic information from social media platforms (X; YouTube; Bluesky; Facebook; Instagram) and more than 150 000 online news sources. This collaboration is a step towards providing timely, ground-level insight into geological hazards around the world.

I am aware that many organisations around the world, including BGS, rely on the manual gathering of data from social media and the news during disaster events, and to update regional and national hazard inventories.  This can add a significant time lag to relevant information being interpreted, particularly during natural disasters, which means any actions taken are also delayed. We have been working with FloodTags for some time now and are delighted to formalise our collaboration in this highly valuable area of research.

Catherine Pennington, BGS Engineering Geologist, landslides.

This collaboration marks a major step forward for FloodTags. Partnering with BGS brings us the scientific expertise and data to expand into landslides and other geological hazards. Their deep knowledge of earth science opens the door to new applications for our real-time media monitoring tools. Combined with the power of large language models, this collaboration allows us to jointly deliver fast and relevant disaster insights for both hydrological and geological hazards. This helps governments and emergency services in making more informed, evidence-based decisions.

Jurjen Wagemaker, founder of FloodTags.

As a first activity under the new Memorandum of Understanding, BGS and FloodTags are in Indonesia this week to present the first version of HazTags, an LLM-powered platform for monitoring floods and landslides using social and news media data. They will discuss long-term collaboration in Indonesia with:

• the Indonesian national research agency, BRIN
• Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG)
• Indonesian Red Cross (PMI)
• Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG)
• Ministry for Public Works (PU)
• National Agency for Disaster Management (BPBD)
• Research Centre for Disaster Mitigation (ITB)

For more information, please contact BGS press (bgspress@bgs.ac.uk) or call 07790 607 010.