Conclusions


For our Data Project Storyboard, we decided to look at trends for various natural disasters, specifically the Houston Flood, Puerto Rico Hurricane, and California Fires, in comparison to the American Red Cross. Overall, for certain natural disasters such as the Houston Flood, there was a significant spike in both searches for the Houston Flood and the American Red Cross, within the same set time frame of approximately 15 days. The initial increase began on August 23 and concluded around September 3. While searches for the Red Cross went back to the normal, searches for the Houston Flood continued to spike periodically. Hurricane Harvey is now being described as the “500 year” flood, with 1 in 500 chance of occurring in any given year. Being such a catastrophic event, the spike, reaching its max on August 29, is reasonable considering the event took place within that time frame. This spike occurs at promptly the same time a major hurricane hit Houston. A similar spike occurs with searches for the Puerto Rico Hurricane, on September 21. Hurricane Maria began as a tropical storm on September 16. The hurricane reached Category 5 strength on September 18. Maria struck Puerto Rico as a high-end Category 4 hurricane on September 20. Slowly making its way northward, Maria gradually degraded and weakened to a tropical storm on September 28, dissipating by October 3. The spike on September 21, is reasonable considering that the storm reached its peak just days earlier. As far as California Fires, searches for the American Red Cross and California Fires have no correlation. While searches for California Fires have spikes on August 29, September 12, and September 21, searches for the American Red Cross had a spike on October 10. Although not all of the natural disasters correlate with high searches of the American Red Cross, the majority of the disasters consistantly spike at around the same time as the Red Cross does, confirming our original claim that the Red Cross would be searched more during these disasters.