Visualizing Wildfire Response: A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Social Media Photos Uploads in Los Angeles

Abstract

Climate change is intensifying the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, including wildfires, with profound impacts on landscapes, communities, and human behavior. Understanding public responses to such events is essential for improving emergency communication, preparedness, and recovery strategies. This study investigates behavioral changes associated with wildfires by analyzing over 140,000 geotagged Flickr images from the Los Angeles metropolitan area between 2005 and 2018. Using computer vision techniques and geospatial analysis, we classified visual content related to fire, smoke, burn scars, humans, and animals to examine how public photo-sharing behavior evolves before, during, and after wildfire events. Contrary to the initial hypothesis that wildfire activity would suppress public engagement, the results reveal a significant surge in social media photo activity surrounding fire ignition dates. Peaks in person-tagged images suggest that individuals often respond to wildfires not by withdrawing, but by documenting and sharing experiences in real time. However, explicit imagery of fire, smoke, and burn scars was relatively rare, highlighting a tendency toward human-centered storytelling over direct depictions of environmental destruction. Spatial analysis shows that fire-related photo clusters are concentrated in wildland-urban interface zones, and temporal trends confirm that engagement is highly event-driven and short-lived. While short-term public engagement increases, the study raises questions about long-term recreational use of fire-affected landscapes—a topic that warrants future longitudinal research. These findings demonstrate the value of leveraging social imagery as a real-time and spatially grounded lens for analyzing human responses to environmental disasters. They also underscore the need for improved computer vision models and sustained investigation into the longer-term behavioral impacts of climate-exacerbated wildfire regimes.