Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

@Houstonpolice: An Exploratory Case Of Twitter During Hurricane Harvey, Seungwon Yang, Brenton Stewart

Faculty Publications

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Houston Police Department (HPD)’s public engagement efforts using Twitter during Hurricane Harvey, which was a large-scale urban crisis event.

Design/methodology/approach

This study harvested a corpus of over 13,000 tweets using Twitter’s streaming API, across three phases of the Hurricane Harvey event: preparedness, response and recovery. Both text and social network analysis (SNA) techniques were employed including word clouds, n-gram analysis and eigenvector centrality to analyze data.

Findings

Findings indicate that departmental tweets coalesced around topics of protocol, reassurance and community resilience. Twitter accounts of governmental agencies, such as …

The Wood Pellet Industry In The United States South: An Exploratory Study Of Resident Environmental, Social, And Economic Perceptions, Mason Thomas Leblanc

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis research provides insight into the wood pellet manufacturing industry from the perspectives of residents in the US South, focusing on environmental, social, and economic constructs. The region is the largest producer and exporter of wood pellets in the world. The focus of previous research on wood pellets has focused on environmental, energy, and economic attributes. This study is the first of its kind to expand the research to investigate in-depth socio-economic dynamics and fill a general gap in knowledge of the relationship between the wood pellet industry and public supply-side issues in the region. Two rounds of a …

The Importance Of Landscape Position Information And Elevation Uncertainty For Barrier Island Habitat Mapping And Modeling, Nicholas Matthew Enwright

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Barrier islands provide important ecosystem services, including storm protection and erosion control to the mainland, habitat for fish and wildlife, and tourism. As a result, natural resource managers are concerned with monitoring changes to these islands and modeling future states of these environments. Landscape position, such as elevation and distance from shore, influences habitat coverage on barrier islands by regulating exposure to abiotic factors, including waves, tides, and salt spray. Geographers commonly use aerial topographic lidar data for extracting landscape position information. However, researchers rarely consider lidar elevation uncertainty when using automated processes for extracting elevation-dependent habitats from lidar data. …

Climatology, Variability, And Return Periods Of Tropical Cyclone Strikes In The Northeastern And Central Pacific Basins, Nicholas S. Grondin

LSU Master's Theses

Tropical cyclones (TCs) are among the most destructive meteorological phenomena and impact the lives of people who reside along the coast. The American Pacific Coastline borders the second most active TC development region in the world, the northeastern Pacific (NE Pac) basin. This region, along with the Central Pacific (C Pac)-bordering Hawaii is home to a growing population and cities engaged in a variety of economic activities, most prominently agriculture, fishing, and tourism. This study analyzes fifty-two (1966-2017) years of NE Pac and C Pac TCs through applying track data from the National Hurricane Center’s HURDAT2 and a TC size …

Vulnerability Of Industrial Facilities In The Lower Mississippi River Industrial Corridor To Relative Sea Level Rise And Tropical Cyclone Storm Surge, Joseph Blake Harris

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Relative sea level rise (RSLR) and tropical cyclone-induced storm surge are major threats to the Lower Mississippi River Industrial Corridor (LMRIC) which has approximately 120 industrial complexes located within the corridor. Spatial interpolation methods were applied to the 2004 National Oceanic and Atmospheric published Technical Report #50 subsidence dataset and cross-validation techniques were used to determine the accuracy of each method. Digital elevation models (DEMs) were created for the years 2025, 2050, and 2075, based on these predictive surface of subsidence rates. Future DEMs were utilized to model RSLR and determine the extent of storm surge on the LMRIC by …