Spatial Reliability Assessment of Social Media Mining Techniques with Regard to Disaster Domain-Based Filtering

Sustainable Digital Transformation of Disaster Risk—Integrating New Types of Digital Social Vulnerability and Interdependencies with Critical Infrastructure

This article explores the relationship between digital transformation and disaster risk. Vulnerability studies aim at differentiating impacts and losses by using fine-grained information from demographic, social, and personal characteristics of humans. With ongoing digital development, these characteristics will transform and result in new traits, which need to be identified and integrated. Digital transformations will produce new social groups, partly human, semi-human, or non-human—some of which already exist, and some which can be foreseen by extrapolating from recent developments in the field of brain wearables, robotics, and software engineering. Though involved in the process of digital transformation, many researchers and practitioners in the field of Disaster Risk Reduction or Climate Change Adaptation are not yet aware of the repercussions for disaster and vulnerability assessments. Emerging vulnerabilities are due to a growing dependency on digital services and tools in the case of a severe emergency or crisis. This article depicts the different implications for future theoretical frameworks when identifying novel semi-human groups and their vulnerabilities to disaster risks. Findings include assumed changes within common indicators of social vulnerability, new indicators, a typology of humans, and human interrelations with digital extensions and two different perspectives on these groups and their dependencies with critical infrastructure.

Mapping Environmental Conflicts Using Spatial Text Mining

Mapping the characteristics and extent of environmental conflicts related to land use is important for developing regionally specific policies. However, because it is only possible to verify the frequency of conflicts on a specific predetermined subject, it is difficult to determine the various reasons for conflicts in a region. Therefore, this study mapped the current status of regional environmental conflicts in South Korea using a spatial text mining technique, then proposed relevant management policies. The results were obtained by analyzing environmental conflict data extracted from the online agendas of regional environmental organizations. Air quality-related conflicts in South Korea are concentrated in western municipalities; development-related conflicts are concentrated in the southern region of Jeju Island; and intensive safety-related conflicts occur in metropolitan areas, particularly Ulsan. Thus, the type of conflict is determined by the local environment, in accordance with the definition of environmental conflict, and the distribution is determined by the location of the stakeholder population. This study reveals the issues and locations related to local environmental conflict that require further attention, and proposes more wide-ranging methods for managing the links between conflicts by mapping environmental conflicts on a large scale rather than on an individual basis.