Melissa Bica’s contribution to the “Chancing the Storm” series engages crisis informatics—research on “how people use personal information and communication technology, including social media, to respond to disaster…and cope with uncertainty.” Bica draws on her research on the use of Twitter during the 2017 hurricane season as a tool for experts to communicate and for people to evaluate the uncertainty of information about potential risks of major storms. Using a human-centered data science approach, she analyzes, in both quantitative and context-specific ways, conversations on Twitter as they took place in real time—using the example of how people interpret “spaghetti plots” used by meteorologists to represent the degree and location of risk.
Melissa Bica
Melissa Bica is a PhD candidate in computer science at University of Colorado Boulder, where she also received a MS in computer science. She is a part of Project EPIC (Empowering the Public with Information in Crisis) and is a graduate student research affiliate with the Natural Hazards Center. Her research investigates risk communication for hurricanes among authoritative communicators and members of the public via social media in order to support the public's risk assessments and decision making.