Collation and Analysis of Weather Impacts from Social Media 2022 - 2024

The Met Office and Flood Forecasting Centre (FFC) require access to filtered, relevant and geo-located impact information in near real time during weather events. This is to support operational situational awareness, real-time forecast modification and to support post event verification of the National Severe Weather Warning Service and the Flood Guidance Statement. Impacts are often reported on social media and the ability to obtain this information quickly, consistently and with minimal noise is becoming increasingly important. This is because there is an increased expectation for the Met Office and FFC to have a detailed awareness of impacts as they happen, and the collation of higher quality and quantity impact information improves the confidence in the assessment of the skill of our forecasts. This project will procure an operational tool that collates, filters and geo-locates near real-time impact information to support operational forecasts and verification. This will support the Met Office corporate vision to be recognised as global leaders in weather and climate science, given this is a nascent and emerging technology that we will be among the first to develop and use. It will also support our anchor of improving the skill and verification of our 0–2-hour forecasts (nowcasts) as well as exploiting this particular branch of data science