Download a Crisis Lexicon

This page contains download instructions for a crisis lexicon.

CrisisLexRec Recommended CrisisLex lexicon Jul 2014

Our recommended lexicon for Twitter querying contains an automatically-generated and human-curated list of terms found to be frequently related to disasters. This was done by studying terms frequency distribution in the CrisisLexT6 collection; looking for terms that were discriminative and frequent in crisis tweets, and common across various crises; and performing a crowdsourced curation step to curate the list. Details are given in [Olteanu et al. 2014].

This lexicon strikes a balance between precision (collecting mostly tweets related to crises) and recall (collecting most of the crisis-related tweets) when used to collect Twitter data. By introducing variations in the process that builds a lexicon, we can achieve different trade-offs between precision and recall, e.g. to emphasize one at the expense of the other. A number of other variants of this lexicon are included.

flood crisis, victims, flood victims, flood powerful, powerful storms, hoisted flood, storms amazing, explosion, amazing rescue, rescue women, flood cost, counts flood, toll rises, braces river, river peaks, crisis deepens, prayers, thoughts prayers, affected tornado, affected, death toll, tornado relief, photos flood, water rises, toll, flood waters, flood appeal, victims explosion, bombing suspect, massive explosion, affected areas, praying victims, injured, please join, join praying, prayers people, redcross, text redcross, visiting flood, lurches fire, video explosion, deepens death, opposed flood, help flood, died explosions, marathon explosions, flood relief, donate, first responders, flood affected, donate cross, braces, tornado victims, deadly, prayers affected, explosions running, evacuated, relief, flood death, deaths confirmed, affected flooding, people killed, dozens, footage, survivor finds, worsens eastern, flood worsens, flood damage, people dead, girl died, flood, donation help, major flood, rubble, another explosion, confirmed dead, rescue, send prayers, flood warnings, tornado survivor, damage, devastating, flood toll, affected hurricane, prayers families, releases photos, hundreds injured, inundated, crisis, text donation, redcross give, recede, bombing, massive, bombing victims, explosion ripped, gets donated, donated victims, relief efforts, news flood, flood emergency, give online, fire flood, huge explosion, bushfire, torrential rains, residents, breaking news, redcross donate, affected explosion, disaster, someone captured, tragedy, enforcement, people injured, twister, blast, crisis deepens, injuries reported, fatalities, donated million, donations assist, dead explosion, survivor, death, suspect dead, peaks deaths, love prayers, explosion fertiliser, explosion reported, return home, evacuees, large explosion, firefighters, morning flood, praying, public safety, txting redcross, destroyed, displaced, fertilizer explosion, unknown number, donate tornado, retweet donate, flood tornado, casualties, climate change, financial donations, stay strong, dead hundreds, major explosion, bodies recovered, waters recede, response disasters, victims donate, unaccounted, fire fighters, explosion victims, prayers city, accepting financial, torrential, bomber, disasters txting, explosion registered, missing flood, volunteers, brought hurricane, relief fund, help tornado, explosion fire, ravaged, prayers tonight, tragic, enforcement official, saddened, dealing hurricane, impacted, flood recovery, stream, dead torrential, flood years, nursing, recover, responders, massive tornado, buried alive, alive rubble, crisis rises, flood peak, homes inundated, flood ravaged, explosion video, killed injured, killed people, people died, missing explosion, make donation, floods kill, tornado damage, entire crowd, cross tornado, terrifying, need terrifying, even scary, cost deaths, facing flood, deadly explosion, dead missing, floods force, flood disaster, tornado disaster, medical examiner, help victims, hundreds homes, severe flooding, shocking video, bombing witnesses, magnitude, firefighters police, fire explosion, storm, flood hits, floodwaters, emergency, flash flood, flood alerts, crisis unfolds, daring rescue, tragic events, medical office, deadly tornado, people trapped, police officer, explosion voted, lives hurricane, bombings reports, breaking suspect, bombing investigation, praying affected, reels surging, surging floods, teenager floods, rescue teenager, appeal launched, explosion injured, injured explosion, responders killed, explosion caught, city tornado, help text, name hurricane, damaged hurricane, breaking arrest, suspect bombing, massive manhunt, releases images, shot killed, rains severely, house flood, live coverage, devastating tornado, lost lives, reportedly dead, following explosion, remember lives, tornado flood, want help, seconds bombing, reported dead, imminent, rebuild, safe hurricane, surviving, injuries, prayers victims, police suspect, warning, help affected, kills forces, dead floods, flood threat, military, flood situation, thousands homes, risk running, dead injured, dying hurricane, loss life, thoughts victims, bombing shot, breaking enforcement, police people, video capturing, feared dead, terrible explosion, prayers involved, reported injured, seismic, victims waters, flood homeowners, flood claims, homeowners reconnect, reconnect power, power supplies, rescuers help, free hotline, hotline help, please stay, investigation, saddened loss, identified suspect, bombings saddened, killed police, dead, praying community, registered magnitude, leave town, reported explosion, heart praying, life heart, prepare hurricane, landfall, crisis worsens, arrest, bombing case, suspect run, communities damaged, destruction, levy, tornado, hurricane coming, toxins flood, release toxins, toxins, supplies waters, crisis found, braces major, government negligent, attack, hurricane, rebuilt communities, help rebuilt, rebuilt, rescuers, buried, heart prayers, flood levy, watch hurricane, victims lost, soldier, waiting hurricane, run massive, high river, terror, memorial service, terror attack, coast hurricane, terrified hurricane, aftermath, suspect killed, suspect pinned, lost legs, hurricane category, names terrified, authorities, assist people, hurricane black, unknown soldier, events, safety, troops, disaster relief, cleanup, troops lend, effected hurricane, time hurricane, saying hurricane, praying families, dramatic, path hurricane

If you use the CrisisLexRec lexicon, please cite:

Browse on GitHub CrisisLexLexicon-v1.0.zip (2.9 KB)

EMTerms Terminological Resource for Crisis Tweets Feb 2015

A release of EMTerms (Emergency Management Terms), a large crisis-related terminological resource containing 7,200 crisis-related terms. The terms have been collected from a seed set of terms manually annotated by a linguist and an emergency manager in 4 crisis events tweets. A Conditional Random Fields (CRF) method has been then applied to tweets from 35 crisis events, in order to expand the set of terms by overcoming the difficulty of getting more emergency managers’ annotations. The terms are classified into 23 information-specific categories, by using a combination of expert annotations and crowdsourcing. Details are given in [Temnikova et al. 2015].

Code Name Description
T01 Caution and advice Warnings issues or lifted, guidance, and tips.
T02 Injured people Casualties (injured) due to the crisis.
T03 Dead people Casualties (deceased) due to the crisis.
T04 Infrastructure damage Buildings or roads damaged or operational; utilities/services interrupted or restored.
T05 Money Money requested, donated, or spent.
T06 Supplies needed or offered Needs or donations of supplies such as food, water, clothing, medical supplies or blood.
T07 Services needed or offered Services needed or offered by volunteers or professionals.
T08 Missing, found, or trapped people Questions and/or reports about missing or found people.
T09 Displaced and evacuated people People who have relocated due to the crisis, even for a short time (includes evacuations).
T10 Animal management Pets and other non-human animals, living, missing, displaced, or injured/dead.
T11 Personal updates, sympathy Status updates about individuals or loved ones; emotional support, thoughts and prayers.
Code Name Description
C01 Children and education Children's well-being and education.
C02 Food and nutrition Nutritional well-being. Needs food, or able to provide food.
C03 Health Mental, physical, emotional well-being and health.
C04 Logistics and transportation Delivery and storage of goods and supplies.
C05 Camp and shelter Shelter required or offered; condition and location of shelters and camps.
C06 Water, sanitation, and hygiene Availability of clean water, waste and sewage disposal, access to hygienic facilities.
C07 Safety and security Protection of people/property against harm such as violence or theft.
C08 Telecommunications Mobile and landline networks, Internet.
Code Name Description
O01 Weather Updates about the weather.
O02 Response agencies in place Formal response agencies present (and acting) at the crisis location.
O03 Witnesses’ accounts Direct accounts by eyewitnesses of the crisis.
O04 Impact of the crisis Negative consequences of the crisis.

If you use the EMTerms 1.0 terminological resource, please cite:

EMTerms-v1.0.zip (400 KB)

Other Lexicons

We would like to host and/or provide links to other domain-specific lexicons, in particular for crises. Please contact us if you have a lexicon(s) you would like us to include.