Natural Hazards and Climate Change in Kenya: Minimizing the Impacts on Vulnerable Communities Through Early Warning Systems - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 361

may not be entirely accurate and duplicate reports are not uncommon (Gao et al.
2011 ). This has the potential to lead to skewed results and panic situations when
dealing with disasters.

19.8.4 Filters for Feeds?

Although some limitations exist, it is possible to see opportunity within social
media for disaster preparedness (Starbird and Palen 2010 ; Nugroho 2011 ;
Ichiguchi 2011 ). It can be applicable to regions in Kenya as there is surge in
mobile phone growth (Anokwa et al. 2009 ), and tools like the Ushahidi Platform
(Whitla 2009 ) and open source data collecting (Anokwa et al. 2009 ) have had suc-
cess in the past in this region. Information gathered by crowd sourcing was com-
pared to press releases or scientifi c studies, and the majority of information was
linked to reputable news sites and companies that could validate the information
(Ichiguchi 2011 ). It is argued that popular informational sites like Wikipedia -
supported and up-kept by civil society - have become more accurate than actual
encyclopedia entries (Voss 2005 ). It is recommended that platforms for disaster
information sharing have rigorous monitoring systems to effectively prevent falsi-
fi ed information from leaking through. If such actions are taken, social media can
be the future of the EWS process, gathering relevant data related to disasters, alert-
ing citizens of disasters, and opening communication channels between civil soci-
ety and decision-makers.

References

Adhikari P, Hong Y (2013) Will Nzoia Basin in Kenya see water defi ciency in coming decades as
a result of climate change. Br J Environ Climate Change 3(1):67-85
Aguilar L, Araujo A, Quesada-Aguilar A (2007) Reforestation, afforestation, deforestation, cli-
mate change and gender, factsheet. IUCN, Costa Rica
Anokwa Y, Hartung C, Brunette W, Borriello G, Lerer A (2009) Open source data collection in the
developing world. Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT published by IEEE Computer
Society. Washington, DC
Archer ERM (2003) Identifying underserved end-user groups in the provision of climate informa-
tion. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 11(84):1525-1532
Baudoin MA, Cuni-Sanchez A, Fandohan B (2013) Small scale farmers' vulnerability to climatic
changes in southern Benin: the importance of farmers' perceptions of existing institutions
Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. Mitig Adapt Strat Glob Chang.
doi: 10.1007/s11027-013-9468-9
Bengtsson L, Lu X, Thorson A, Garfi eld R, von Schreeb J (2011) Improved response to disasters
and outbreaks by tracking population movements with mobile phone network data: a post-
earthquake geospatial study in Haiti. PLoS Med 8(8):e1001083. doi: 10.1371/journal.
pmed.1001083
Blaikie P, Cannon T, Davis I, Wisner B (1994) At risk: natural hazards, people's vulnerability and
disasters. Routledge, London, UK