Social media is becoming an effective tool in alerting the public to natural disasters and tracking what’s happening in communities and regions impacted by hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and similarly threatening events. That is due in part to work being done in research facilities such as ASU’s Data Mining and Machine Learning Lab. Lab member Tahora Nazer, a Fulton Schools computer science doctoral student, explains how social media outlets are being used to provide communications from the sites of natural disasters and aiding the work of emergency response and rescue operations. Manuel Aviles-Santiago, an ASU professor of communications and culture, tells how social media connected family members in the aftermath of one major hurricane.