Wilby, R. L. and Murphy, C. and O'Connor, P. and Thompson, J. J. and Matthews, T. (2023) Google Trends indicators to inform water planning and drought management. The Geographical Journal. ISSN 0016-7398

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Abstract

Indicators are important tools for tracking the socio- environmental impacts of droughts and building resilience to climate change. We begin with an overview of metrics used for water planning and drought management, with particular emphasis on the UK. We explain how considerations of cost, immediacy, access, consistency, relevance, reliability and others denote the suitability of information for developing new indicators. We then demonstrate the potential of Google Trends (GT) online search data as drought indicators for England and Ireland. We show that search terms such as ‘drought’, ‘water butt’ and ‘hosepipe ban’ correlate significantly with conventional hydroclimatic data as well as with news-paper reports of various drought impacts during the period 2011–2022. GT data also show evidence of rising interest in water saving technologies, especially for outdoor water use. Meanwhile, online searches for ‘Defra’ and ‘Environment Agency’ have declined and are more often associated with flood episodes than droughts. Interest in water companies in England is more likely around hosepipe bans than water leakage (although this varies by company). We discuss the impli-cations of these findings for targeting information campaigns, plus prospects for monitoring drought impacts and public sentiment in near real- time.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Cite as: Wilby, R.L., Murphy, C., O'Connor, P., Thompson, J.J. and Matthews, T., 2023. Google Trends indicators to inform water planning and drought management. The Geographical Journal.
Keywords:	drought; England; Google Trends; indicator; Ireland; newspapers;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units, ICARUS
Item ID:	17960
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12567
Depositing User:	Conor Murphy
Date Deposited:	20 Dec 2023 12:01
Journal or Publication Title:	The Geographical Journal
Publisher:	Wiley Online
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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