Mrs Michelle Spruce
Postgraduate
Telephone: 01392 723624
Extension: (Streatham) 3624
I am a second year PhD student, supervised by Dr Hywel Williams, working on projects to detect, locate and understand the impact of environmental hazards using social media. In particular I am interested in the social impacts of extreme weather events.
I graduated in 2001 with a First Class Physics degree from Durham University then worked in the Met Office as an Operational Meteorologist for the RAF. Since leaving the Met Office I have worked in both the private and public sectors, spending 10 years working as a Data Analyst and Strategic Planning manager at the University of Chester, Manchester Metropolitan University and most recently the University of Exeter. Having completed a Masters Degree in Information Systems (with distinction) in 2015 I have now returned to full time study and commenced an EPSRC funded PhD.
I am currently working on collating Twitter data on named storms in the UK to understand the impacts from such events, such as changes in sentiment and type of Twitter posts. I am also working on a project with the Met Office to produce Global Hazard Maps using Twitter data, detecting, locating and understanding the impacts of these events as described by Twitter users.