Using social media feeds for mapping and assessing areas affected by flooding due to tropical cyclones

From February to March 2023, Tropical Cyclone Freddy caused widespread flooding and mudslides in Madagascar, Mozambique, and most parts of Zimbabwe and southern Malawi. In Malawi, it was reported that more than 511 people lost their lives, 533 remain missing, and 563,602 people displaced (reliefweb, 2023). According to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Reduction, communities affected by disasters can build back better if past disasters are used as a basis for strengthening disaster risk reduction programs (United Nations, 2015). Therefore, this can be practical if real-world experiences are well documented and made available for disaster management programs. Ostensibly, with Cyclone Freddy, we observed that in Malawi, information about damages related to disasters and response measures taken has been widely shared through social media platforms, especially WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook. Thus, social media platforms present the significant potential of data sources to operationalize the provisions of the Sendai Framework (especially priority action 4).