Unravelling information on impactful geo-hydrological hazard events with HazMiner, a multilingual text mining method developed through a global scale coverage application

By Valkenborg, Dewitte, Dananjaya +1Natural hazards and earth system sciencesNov 2, 2026

Score████░░░░░░4.4

VerdictWorth a reader's time today.

Abstract

Abstract. The incidence and impacts from geo-hydrological hazards (GH) such as floods, flash floods and landslides are changing globally due to anthropogenic environmental changes and increased exposure driven by population growth. Reliable datasets on GH are essential to deepen our understanding of these hazards and their impacts. However, existing GH datasets contain data gaps leading to biased interpretations, especially in the Global South where populations are commonly the most impacted. Text mining offers new opportunities in documenting GH by automatically extracting information from large text corpora. Despite its potential, current methodologies are not adapted to improve documentation in data-scared contexts. We present HazMiner, a paragraph-based text mining method designed to document the location, timing and impact of GH through large language models across multiple languages and at various scales. Applied here globally on 6,366,905 news articles published from 2017 through 2024 in 58 languages, HazMiner extracted 21,411 flood, 7,659 landslide and 3,606 flash flood events with known location and time information and, in some cases, impact data. Compared to existing hazard datasets, HazMiner significantly improved hazard documentation, reducing the data gaps in many regions, especially in the Global South. The new versatile multilingual method and its dataset advances both text mining and natural hazard research.

Bram Valkenborg, Olivier Dewitte, I Wayan Gita Krishna Dananjaya, Benoît Smets

The editor's rubric

Heuristic review

Leverage4 / 5: A general-purpose tool used across several fields (Adam, ResNet, LoRA, next-generation sequencing).; 16% of this desk’s rubric
Magnitude2 / 5: Solid incremental gain on a meaningful problem.; 20% of this desk’s rubric
Evidence3 / 5: Solid: multiple benchmarks or cohorts, ablations, fair baselines, released code or data.; 20% of this desk’s rubric
Novelty2 / 5: A new combination of known ideas.; 10% of this desk’s rubric
Trajectory3 / 5: A clear path to scale.; 14% of this desk’s rubric
Stakes3 / 5: Meaningful benefit to many people within a few years.; 20% of this desk’s rubric

Dimension	Level	Weight	What that level means
Leverage	████░4/5	16%	A general-purpose tool used across several fields (Adam, ResNet, LoRA, next-generation sequencing).
Magnitude	██░░░2/5	20%	Solid incremental gain on a meaningful problem.
Evidence	███░░3/5	20%	Solid: multiple benchmarks or cohorts, ablations, fair baselines, released code or data.
Novelty	██░░░2/5	10%	A new combination of known ideas.
Trajectory	███░░3/5	14%	A clear path to scale.
Stakes	███░░3/5	20%	Meaningful benefit to many people within a few years.

Editor’s rationale

Heuristic triage from title and abstract text only, not a reading of the paper. Cues found: method (we propose); breadth (many tasks, programmable); verification (multiple benchmarks); scale (scalable); stakes (global scale, climate).

How the score was computed

rank-2026-10-18

Score████░░░░░░4.4

Score = 10 × (75% × adjusted merit / 10 + 15% × attention + 10% × freshness)

Desks place stronger verdicts first, then use this score to order work within the same verdict.

Merit: 5.7 / 10; Weighted rubric, evidence-gated.
Adjusted merit: 4.8 / 10; Shrunk toward the desk prior by editor confidence (44%).
Attention: 0%; Citations, upvotes, points, mentions.
Freshness: 85%; Half-life decay since publication.

Citations0 (reference 15, via openalex, Nov 4, 2026, 07:24 UTC)

The record

Reviewed by heuristic-v10 on Nov 4, 2026, 07:23 UTC. Paper type: method.
Categories: Flood Risk Assessment and Management, Landslides and related hazards, Disaster Management and Resilience, Global and Planetary Change, Environmental Science
TOP, No.1 in the Climate & Energy edition of November 4, 2026.