This year, a research institute hopes social media can play a more practical role - asking residents to tweet details about floods in their neighbourhoods and using the data to issue geographically specific flood alerts in real-time. Around the world in countries including Australia and Indonesia, climate researchers are increasingly using data gathered via social media to help monitor weather events such as floods. They say the data could be used to improve emergency response and rescue efforts and make forecasting more accurate, which will become all the more vital as climate change fuels extreme weather. "We need participatory models for climate adaptation as we will be hit by more extreme rainfall events in the near future. We will be able to show real-time flooding like Google Maps shows red for traffic," said Ghosh.