Natural Disasters' Relationship to Social Mood: How we chart it

In a recent conversation with a university dept. head, it was expressed that the meteorology dept. was concerned about possible catastrophic tornadoes in the early spring this year in the Midwest.  We were able to tell him that while we were watching for the next big U.S. disaster in the early spring, that the risk of it being a natural disaster was low.  However, close to April 9 there would be a greater risk for a natural event.  As it turned out, those big storms that blew across the U.S. (Walda) were the most powerful on April 8-10. Yet, we told him this before Walda even had a name.  How was this possible?

 

We get social mood from Google Hot Trends.  This tells us where people are at.  We also measure the mood reflected in current events via top U.S. news stories, and its relation to social mood.  Before a disaster occurs, of any sort, there is a process that we have found always occurs.  Basically, where people are at and where the news is at reaches a maximum divergence, then a process begins that brings it all back together.  Disasters, whether natural or human caused are a primary means of things getting in sync again.  We can't talk about why without getting into metaphysical supposition. Yet, we have a method that makes this process repeatable, observable and quantifiable. 

The above chart is derived from the relationship of entropy and its opposite phimation,*  and their divergence between social mood and the news.  We quantify this in the way we categorize the social mood data that we gather. When entropy in the news  (vs. where people are at) is sufficient and then phimation surpasses it, that means a natural disaster is likely. In the  above chart, the light yellow range (45-55%) will likely not do much damage in the U.S., but may manifest in serious natural event damage elsewhere (e.g. the recent Iran earthquake).  In the middle orange range (55-70%), there will likely be some serious damage, but it won’t be seen as a national “disaster” (e.g. Walda); also it may manifest as a natural disaster outside of the U.S.. The top red range (>70%) indicates events that will be experienced as natural disasters in the U.S. are almost certain; risk for major natural disasters elsewhere would also be very high. 

This is all based on a recent breakthrough we had on the nature of disasters in late February, which has given us so much more to work with. Hope that helps to clarify our approach and the connection between disasters and social mood.  For more on this recent breakthrough, check out the presentation: Disaster: Society's Shadow.

 

For more information on the current outlook or the MoodCompass Project, see http://moodcompass.com.

You can also like The MoodCompass Project on .


* Phimation as the self-organizing principle or force opposing entropy in complex systems was first used by Robert Prechter.

Are we done with disasters?

With this past alert period (April 2-11) we experienced a combination of two U.S. events that could have been much worse than they were. From April 8-11 was the fiercest impact of Walda. There were 3 official fatalities, some buildings destroyed and some roofs blown off, but it could have been worse. On April 9, there were 14 people stabbed at a college in Texas, yet no one was killed.

Both of these events matched the type of events in the series of major U.S. tragedies since July 2012 (Aurora, CO theater, Libya ambassador, Hurricane Sandy, and Sandy Hook), and both reflected the MoodCompass event types we were watching for. Yet, neither by itself was as severe as the other items in the series. There are two possible conclusions we can draw from this:
1) Two half-disasters can take the place of one big one.
2) This again was not "the big one" and something else will have to happen to relieve pressure and restore balance.

While we have to allow that a larger, more impactful event is still on its way, we are going to assume conclusion 1) for now, and that this particular balancing is over. However, there is still a larger imbalance that has remained mostly untouched for many months, even in the presence of the tragic U.S. events that have been happening. Is this more of a global imbalance that will require a global resolution? We will be keeping a close watch on that.

For more information on the current outlook or the MoodCompass Project, see http://moodcompass.com.
You can also like The MoodCompass Project on .

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Update 4/15/13: The Boston Marathon terrorist attack today confirmed, unfortunately, that it was #2 above.  This adds Boston Marathon to the growing list of U.S. tragedies above.