Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media Data for Socio-Environmental Systems Research

Monitoring jellyfish outbreaks along Israel's Mediterranean coast using digital footprints

With mounting global concerns about jellyfish outbreaks, monitoring their occurrence remains challenging. Tapping into the wealth of digital data that internet users share online, which includes reports of jellyfish sightings, may provide an alternative or complement to more conventional expert-based or citizen science monitoring. Here, we explore digital footprints as a data source to monitor jellyfish outbreaks along the Israeli Mediterranean coast. We compiled jellyfish sighting data for the period 2011-2022 from multiple platforms, including leading social media platforms, searches in the Google search engine, and Wikipedia page views. Employing time series analysis, cross-correlation, and various evaluation metrics for presence/absence data, we compared weekly data from three sources: digital footprints, citizen science, and traditional expert-based field monitoring. Consistent seasonal patterns emerge across datasets, with notable correlations, particularly in jellyfish abundance. The cross-correlation between digital footprint and citizen science data exceeds >0.7, with Twitter and Instagram showing the highest correlation. Citizen science data often precedes digital footprints by up to one week. Correlation with traditional, expert-based field monitoring is limited as a result of limited data availability. Digital footprints demonstrate substantial agreement with the other data sources regarding jellyfish presence/absence and major outbreaks, especially for data from Wikipedia, Twitter, and Instagram. Overall, we highlight digital footprint data as a reliable, cost-effective tool for passive monitoring of jellyfish outbreaks, which can aid characterization in data-scarce coastal regions, including retrospective assessment. Transferring and scaling up the proposed approach should consider data accessibility as well as platform relative popularity and usage in the regions under investigation.

Radiation Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs) are on the Horizon: Advancing Radiation Protection through an International Horizon-Style Exercisewe

Purpose: The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework, a systematic tool that can link available mechanistic data with phenotypic outcomes of relevance to regulatory decision-making, is being explored in areas related to radiation risk assessment. To examine the challenges including the use of AOPs to support the radiation protection community, an international horizon-style exercise (HSE) was initiated through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Nuclear Energy Agency High-Level Group on Low Dose Research Radiation/Chemical AOP Joint Topical Group (JTG). The objective of the HSE was to facilitate the collection of ideas from a range of experts, to short-list a set of priority research questions that could, if answered, improve the description of the radiation dose-response relationship for low dose/dose-rate exposures, as well as reduce uncertainties in estimating the risk of developing adverse health outcomes following such exposures.Materials and methods: The HSE was guided by an international steering committee (SC) of radiation risk experts. In the first phase, research questions were solicited on areas that can be supported by the AOP framework, or challenges on the use of AOPs in radiation risk assessment. In the second phase, questions received were refined and sorted by the SC using a best-worst scaling (BWS) method. During a virtual 3-day workshop, the list of questions was further narrowed. In the third phase, an international survey of the broader radiation protection community led to an orderly ranking of the top questions.Results: Of the 271 questions solicited, 254 were accepted and categorized into 9 themes. These were further refined to the top 25 prioritized questions. Among these, the higher ranked questions will be considered as 'important' to drive future initiatives in the low dose radiation protection community. These included questions on the ability of AOPs to delineate responses across different levels of biological organization, and how AOPs could be applied to address research questions on radiation quality, doses or dose-rates, exposure time patterns and deliveries, and uncertainties in low dose/dose-rate effects. A better understanding of these concepts is required to support the use of the AOP framework in radiation risk assessment.Conclusion: Through dissemination of these results and considerations on next steps, the JTG will address select priority questions to advance the development and use of AOPs in the radiation protection community. The major themes observed will be discussed in the context of their relevance to areas of research that support the system of radiation protection.

Under the influence of nature: The contribution of natural capital to tourism spend

Tourism and outdoor leisure is an important economic sector for many countries, and has a substantial reliance on natural capital. Natural capital may be the primary purpose for tourism, or it may be a secondary factor, where the choice of location for a leisure activity is influenced by natural capital. Typically, when valuing tourism and outdoor leisure, all expenditure associated with the activity is assigned to the ecosystem it occurs in. However, this value illustrates the dependency on natural capital, rather than the contribution of natural capital. In natural capital accounting, a major challenge is to separately identify the contribution of natural capital from that of other forms of capital. In this study we develop a transparent and repeatable method that is able to attribute the contribution of natural capital (here defined as ecosystems) to the output of multiple tourism and outdoor leisure activities. Using national statistics from Great Britain, we calculate the natural capital contribution to tourism spend by activity at a national and regional scale, and for a case study map and value the contributing ecosystems. We estimated that, out of a total £36 billion spent on tourism and leisure activities in 2017, £22.5 billion was attributable to natural capital. This equates to 0.9% of the UK GDP. The Gross Value Added component of this attributable was £10.5 billion, equivalent to 0.4% of the UK GDP. Regions with the highest natural capital contribution in Great Britain were Scotland and Wales, with the lowest being Greater London and the West Midlands in England. For the case study, the ecosystems with the greatest contribution to terrestrial activities were marine and enclosed farmland. These methods can be applied worldwide for anywhere with aggregate economic statistics on expenditure associated with tourism and outdoor leisure, with the aid of open source GIS datasets.

Social Media as a Medium to Promote Local Perception Expression in China’s World Heritage Sites

The assessment of public participation is one of the most fundamental components of holistic and sustainable cultural heritage management. Since the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic became a catalyst for the transformation of participatory tools. Collaboration with stakeholders moved online due to the strict restrictions preventing on-site activities. This phenomenon provided an opportunity to formulate more comprehensive and reasonable urban heritage protection strategies. However, very few publications mentioned how social networking sites’ data could support humanity-centred heritage management and participatory evaluation. Taking five World Cultural Heritage Sites as research samples, the study provides a methodology to evaluate online participatory practices in China through Weibo, a Chinese-originated social media platform. The data obtained were analysed from three perspectives: the users’ information, the content of texts, and the attached images. As shown in the results section, individuals’ information is described by gender, geo-location, celebrities, and Key Opinion Leaders. To a greater extent, participatory behaviour emerges at the relatively primary levels, that being “informing and consulting”. According to the label detection of Google Vision, residents paid more attention to buildings, facades, and temples in the cultural heritage sites. The research concludes that using social media platforms to unveil interplays between digital and physical heritage conservation is feasible and should be widely encouraged.

Detecting the Severity of Socio-Spatial Conflicts Involving Wild Boars in the City Using Social Media Data

The encroachment of wild boars into urban areas is a growing problem. The occurrence of wild boars in cities leads to conflict situations. Socio-spatial conflicts can escalate to a varied degree. Assessments of these conflicts can be performed by analyzing spatial data concerning the affected locations and wild boar behaviors. The collection of spatial data is a laborious and costly process that requires access to urban surveillance systems, in addition to regular analyses of intervention reports. A supporting method for assessing the risk of wild boar encroachment and socio-spatial conflict in cities was proposed in the present study. The developed approach relies on big data, namely, multimedia and descriptive data that are on social media. The proposed method was tested in the city of Olsztyn in Poland. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the applicability of data crowdsourced from a popular social networking site for determining the location and severity of conflicts. A photointerpretation method and the kernel density estimation (KDE) tool implemented in ArcGIS Desktop 10.7.1 software were applied in the study. The proposed approach fills a gap in the application of crowdsourcing data to identify types of socio-spatial conflicts involving wild boars in urban areas. Validation of the results with reports of calls to intervention services showed the high coverage of this approach and thus the usefulness of crowdsourcing data.

Towards a Transdisciplinary Theoretical Framework of Citizen Science: Results from a Meta-Review Analysis

This work intends to lay the foundations for a theoretical framework of citizen science combining social and organizational implications with the support of information technologies. The proposed theoretical framework moves towards a shared and common research process between experts and citizens to deal with environmental and social challenges. The role and capacity of online communities is explored and their engagement capacity by means of web-based digital platforms supporting crowdsourcing activities. In this contribution, authors highlight the most common practices, methods and issues of citizen science approaches adopted from multidisciplinary application fields to obtain insights for designing a new participative approach for organizational studies. To reach this goal, authors illustrate the results of a systematic meta-review analysis, consisting of an accurate selection and revision of journal review articles in order to highlight concepts, methods, research design approaches and tools adopted in citizen science approaches.

How Do Urban Environments Affect Young People's Mental Health? A Novel Conceptual Framework to Bridge Public Health, Planning, and Neurourbanism

Childhood and adolescence are crucial periods for mental and social development. Currently, mental illness among young people is a global epidemic, and rates of disorders such as depression and anxiety are rising. Urban living, compared with rural living, is linked with a higher risk of serious mental illness, which is important because the world is urbanizing faster than ever before. Urban environments and their landscapes, designs, and features influence mental health and well-being. However, no conceptual frameworks to date have detailed the effect of urban environments on young people's mental health, and few studies have considered the growing role of digital and social media in this relationship, leading to calls for the development of holistic approaches to describe this relationship. This article synthesizes existing knowledge on urban places (both built and natural environments) and mental health in the public health and urban planning literature and examines the emerging field of neurourbanism (a multidisciplinary study of the effect of urban environments on mental health and brain activity) to enhance current practice and research. We developed 2 novel conceptual frameworks (1 research-oriented, 1 practice-oriented), adapted from Bronfenbrenner's socioecological model, that focus on the relationship between urban environments and young people's mental health. We added a digital and social media contextual level to the socioecological model, and we applied a multilayer concept to highlight potential cross-field interactions and collaborations. The proposed frameworks can help to guide future practice and research in this area.

Uses and Limitations of Social Media to Inform Visitor Use Management in Parks and Protected Areas: A Systematic Review

Social media are being increasingly used to inform visitor use management in parks and protected areas. We review the state of the scientific literature to understand the ways social media has been, and can be, used to measure visitation, spatial patterns of use, and visitors' experiences in parks and protected areas. Geotagged social media are a good proxy for actual visitation; however, the correlations observed by previous studies between social media and other sources of visitation data vary substantially. Most studies using social media to measure visitation aggregate data across many years, with very few testing the use of social media as a visitation proxy at smaller temporal scales. No studies have tested the use of social media to estimate visitation in near real-time. Studies have used geotags and GPS tracks to understand spatial patterns of where visitors travel within parks, and how that may relate to other variables (e.g., infrastructure), or differ by visitor type. Researchers have also found the text content, photograph content, and geotags from social media posts useful to understand aspects of visitors' experiences, such as behaviors, preferences, and sentiment. The most cited concern with using social media is that this data may not be representative of all park users. Collectively, this body of research demonstrates a broad range of applications for social media. We synthesize our findings by identifying gaps and opportunities for future research and presenting a set of best practices for using social media in parks and protected areas.

Agent-Based Modeling for Integrating Human Behavior into the Food–Energy–Water Nexus

The nexus of food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) has become a salient research topic, as well as a pressing societal and policy challenge. Computational modeling is a key tool in addressing these challenges, and FEWS modeling as a subfield is now established. However, social dimensions of FEWS nexus issues, such as individual or social learning, technology adoption decisions, and adaptive behaviors, remain relatively underdeveloped in FEWS modeling and research. Agent-based models (ABMs) have received increasing usage recently in efforts to better represent and integrate human behavior into FEWS research. A systematic review identified 29 articles in which at least two food, energy, or water sectors were explicitly considered with an ABM and/or ABM-coupled modeling approach. Agent decision-making and behavior ranged from reactive to active, motivated by primarily economic objectives to multi-criteria in nature, and implemented with individual-based to highly aggregated entities. However, a significant proportion of models did not contain agent interactions, or did not base agent decision-making on existing behavioral theories. Model design choices imposed by data limitations, structural requirements for coupling with other simulation models, or spatial and/or temporal scales of application resulted in agent representations lacking explicit decision-making processes or social interactions. In contrast, several methodological innovations were also noted, which were catalyzed by the challenges associated with developing multi-scale, cross-sector models. Several avenues for future research with ABMs in FEWS research are suggested based on these findings. The reviewed ABM applications represent progress, yet many opportunities for more behaviorally rich agent-based modeling in the FEWS context remain.

Creating a Map of the Social Functions of Urban Green Spaces in a City with Poor Availability of Spatial Data: A Sociotope for Lodz

Many cities lack complex spatial databases that can answer the question “What does a given green space offer?” This complicates the lives of inhabitants, planners, and local authorities. One of the ways to obtain a complex picture of urban green spaces is to link multiple data sources. This article presents such an attempt to link multiple data sources to obtain a map of the social functions of urban green spaces in a city without a comprehensive spatial database on urban green spaces. We do so by adapting a method of mapping the social functions of urban green spaces—sociotope mapping—to the Central-Eastern European city of Lodz (Poland). Our results feature a map of the main social functions of urban green spaces (divided into five categories: nature, physical activity, social, play, and aesthetics) and GIS databases, with spatially explicit information on the 48 attributes of 196 urban green spaces in Lodz. According to our results, the greatest effort in sociotope mapping involves collecting data from different sources as it requires collaborating with various stakeholders—the owners of the data. Our study fits into the general trend of linking official data from municipal records with additional data on inhabitants’ preferences for urban green space planning and management.

A Conceptual Model of the Challenges of Social Media Big Data for Citizen e-Participation: A Systematic Review

The emergence of Citizen Relationship Management (CzRM) for government plays a central role in developing citizen relationships and e-participation. As such, the South African government has shown its commitment towards citizenry and the provision of effective service delivery. Social Media Analytics (SMA) has emerged as a potential new solution to support decision-making for service delivery in CzRM. It is believed that the demand for SMA adoption will increasingly rise. However, the reality of social media Big Data comes with the challenges of analysing it in a way that brings Big Value. The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges of social media Big Data Analytics (BDA) and to incorporate these in a conceptual model that can be used by governments to support the e-participation of citizens. The model was developed through a systematic literature review (SLR). The findings revealed that data challenges relate to designing an optimal architecture for analysing data that caters for both historic data and real-time data at the same time. The paper highlight that process challenges relate to all the activities in the data lifecycle such as data acquisition and warehousing; data mining and cleaning; data aggregation and integration; analysis and modelling; and data interpretation. The paper also identifies six types of data management challenges: privacy, security, data governance, data and information sharing, cost/operational expenditures, and data ownership.