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She and her students have been embedded among emergency personnel during the 2013 Colorado floods, collected tweets in real time during the 2015 Nepal earthquake, and evaluated how digital maps helped and hindered aid workers after the 2010 Haiti temblor.

Now, they鈥檙e scouring through tweets from the 2017 hurricane season for a project designed to make forecast images easier to understand for those in harm鈥檚 way.

鈥淐risis informatics enables us to use technological skills to solve real-world problems,鈥� says Melissa Bica, a PhD candidate who was drawn to CU Boulder by Palen鈥檚 research.

In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit, Twitter didn鈥檛 exist, and texting and camera phones were less common.

Today, digital technology enables ordinary citizens to provide a voice once largely reserved for government officials or media in describing the scene, soliciting aid and drawing sympathetic gazes from afar.

鈥淚t is important that we understand that social media is used for all sorts of purposes, because people don鈥檛 necessarily tweet with the intention of helping aid organizations,鈥� Palen says. 鈥淥ften, they are simply talking to their friends, unaware they are being observed for other purposes.鈥�

There鈥檚 also the potential for posts from official sources to be misinterpreted by people in harm鈥檚 way.

For the hurricane study, a collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Palen and her students collected 10 million tweets from Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate. They zeroed in on those containing risk forecast images, such as satellite imagery and graphics showing the 鈥渃one of uncertainty鈥� where the storm might hit next.

鈥淲e are finding that often people don鈥檛 understand what they see,鈥� says James Dykes, a PhD student in information science.

In addition to questions about the elements of the graphics and science of the hurricane, tweets show confusion about what to do in response to a forecast, or expressions of fear and concern.

In response to a weather graphic put out by an Orlando news station, an account called @inthelance tweeted, 鈥淎nd here I am with my roof being redone, just tar paper on it; and weeks from closing. FML.鈥� Another account, @hopscotch59, tweeted, "Is that with a turn to the right back north? What exactly are we looking at here?"

Eventually, such feedback can help forecasting agencies improve their images. By doing this research in collaboration with NCAR, the results will be communicated directly to the large 鈥渨eather community鈥� of practitioners who are distributed across agencies around the nation and the world, Palen says.

With six of her PhD graduates engaging in crisis informatics research around the country, and emergency response officials using that research to inform their work, the field Palen founded makes critical contributions to emergency management. 听

As she puts it: 鈥淏eing part of a small, innovative department at a research university can lead to pretty amazing things.鈥�