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Social media data are transforming sustainability science. However, challenges from restrictions in data accessibility and ethical concerns regarding potential data misuse have threatened this nascent field. Here, we review the literature on the use of social media data in environmental and sustainability research. We find that they can play a novel and irreplaceable role in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals by allowing a nuanced understanding of human-nature interactions at scale, observing the dynamics of social-ecological change, and investigating the co-construction of nature values. We reveal threats to data access and highlight scientific responsibility to address trade-offs between research transparency and privacy protection, while promoting inclusivity. This contributes to a wider societal debate of social media data for sustainability science and for the common good.

These data were collected for the paper, "Social media data for environmental sustainability: a critical review of opportunities, threats and ethical use" published in One Earth. It includes a database of studies applying social media data in environmental sustainability research, which were collected and reviewed in full by the authors. Rather than providing a comprehensive summary of all relevant literature like in a systematic review, our objective was to take stock and evaluate the previous body of work in the field in order to promote conceptual innovation from its critical examination. Building on a set of 169 studies collected in a previous systematic review of social media data applications in environmental research (Ghermandi and Sinclair 2019), the database includes additional relevant studies that were identified by snowballing previous references and adding further gray and scientific academic articles known to the authors. For studies to be included in our analysis, they had to involve the use of data from one or more social media platforms and investigate human interactions with and/or impacts on the environment. We relied on a broad definition of social media including any website or application that enables users to create and share content or to participate in social networking (e.g., blogging sites, recommendation sites, and online forums). We further strengthened the analysis by including insights from additional literature on social media that do not have a direct application to environmental sustainability (e.g., studies on biases in social media data). The final database consists of 415 studies, which were published between 2011 and 2021.

Social media data are transforming sustainability science. However, challenges from restrictions in data accessibility and ethical concerns regarding potential data misuse have threatened this nascent field. Here, we review the literature on the use of social media data in environmental and sustainability research. We find that they can play a novel and irreplaceable role in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals by allowing a nuanced understanding of human-nature interactions at scale, observing the dynamics of social-ecological change, and investigating the co-construction of nature values. We reveal threats to data access and highlight scientific responsibility to address trade-offs between research transparency and privacy protection, while promoting inclusivity. This contributes to a wider societal debate of social media data for sustainability science and for the common good.

These data were collected for the paper, "Social media data for environmental sustainability: a critical review of opportunities, threats and ethical use" published in One Earth. It includes a database of studies applying social media data in environmental sustainability research, which were collected and reviewed in full by the authors. Rather than providing a comprehensive summary of all relevant literature like in a systematic review, our objective was to take stock and evaluate the previous body of work in the field in order to promote conceptual innovation from its critical examination. Building on a set of 169 studies collected in a previous systematic review of social media data applications in environmental research (Ghermandi and Sinclair 2019), the database includes additional relevant studies that were identified by snowballing previous references and adding further gray and scientific academic articles known to the authors. For studies to be included in our analysis, they had to involve the use of data from one or more social media platforms and investigate human interactions with and/or impacts on the environment. We relied on a broad definition of social media including any website or application that enables users to create and share content or to participate in social networking (e.g., blogging sites, recommendation sites, and online forums). We further strengthened the analysis by including insights from additional literature on social media that do not have a direct application to environmental sustainability (e.g., studies on biases in social media data). The final database consists of 415 studies, which were published between 2011 and 2021. Ghermandi, Andrea, and Michael Sinclair. "Passive crowdsourcing of social media in environmental research: A systematic map." Global environmental change 55 (2019): 36-47.

Social media data are transforming sustainability science. However, challenges from restrictions in data accessibility and ethical concerns regarding potential data misuse have threatened this nascent field. Here, we review the literature on the use of social media data in environmental and sustainability research. We find that they can play a novel and irreplaceable role in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals by allowing a nuanced understanding of human-nature interactions at scale, observing the dynamics of social-ecological change, and investigating the co-construction of nature values. We reveal threats to data access and highlight scientific responsibility to address trade-offs between research transparency and privacy protection, while promoting inclusivity. This contributes to a wider societal debate of social media data for sustainability science and for the common good.

Weather-related disasters are on the rise. The causes, whether driven by climate change or changes in exposure and vulnerability of social-ecological-technological systems are still uncertain. Here, we address this issue with an in-depth study of the variability in climate-related extreme events which have impacted New York City (NYC) over the past 140 years. NYC has not historically been viewed as a particularly hazard prone region. However, this perspective is changing, particularly after the disastrous consequences of Hurricane Sandy (2012). We constructed a systematic database of impactful climatic events and assessed multi-sector impacts. Results indicate that hazards have systematically affected the city, with heat waves as the deadliest events and hurricanes as the costliest. We analyzed climatic hazard trends focusing on heat waves and flooding only, since data for these events are available over the full-time frame of the study. We then examined impacts of the most severe of these two hazards using data from The New York Times. Our analyses show that flooding and heat wave extreme events have regularly affected the city over its history with a trend toward increasing mean number of hazards per decade. We highlight a trend of decreased mortality due to heat waves over time and increase in the impacts of heavy precipitation, primarily related to the expansion of the transportation system and potentially to climate change over this time period. We suggest that, especially in urban areas of developed countries such as NYC, changes in built up infrastructure may be the primary drivers of risk to natural hazards.

Megacities are predominantly concentrated along coastlines, making them exposed to a diverse mix of natural hazards. The assessment of climatic hazard risk to cities rarely has captured the multiple interactions that occur in complex urban systems. We present an improved method for urban multi-hazard risk assessment. We then analyze the risk of New York City as a case study to apply enhanced methods for multi-hazard risk assessment given the history of exposure to multiple types of natural hazards which overlap spatially and, in some cases, temporally in this coastal megacity. Our aim is to identify hotspots of multi-hazard risk to support the prioritization of adaptation strategies that can address multiple sources of risk to urban residents. We used socioeconomic indicators to assess vulnerabilities and risks to three climate-related hazards (i.e., heat waves, inland flooding and coastal flooding) at high spatial resolution. The analysis incorporates local experts' opinions to identify sources of multi-hazard risk and to weight indicators used in the multi-hazard risk assessment. Results demonstrate the application of multi-hazard risk assessment to a coastal megacity and show that spatial hotspots of multi-hazard risk affect similar local residential communities along the coastlines. Analyses suggest that New York City should prioritize adaptation in coastal zones and consider possible synergies and/or trade-offs to maximize impacts of adaptation and resilience interventions in the spatially overlapping areas at risk of impacts from multiple hazards.