  Peatland fires and haze events are disasters with national, regional and
international implications. The phenomena lead to direct damage to local
assets, as well as broader economic and environmental losses. Satellite imagery
is still the main and often the only available source of information for
disaster management. In this article, we test the potential of social media to
assist disaster management. To this end, we compare insights from two datasets:
fire hotspots detected via NASA satellite imagery and almost all GPS-stamped
tweets from Sumatra Island, Indonesia, posted during 2014. Sumatra Island is
chosen as it regularly experiences a significant number of haze events, which
affect citizens in Indonesia as well as in nearby countries including Malaysia
and Singapore. We analyse temporal correlations between the datasets and their
geo-spatial interdependence. Furthermore, we show how Twitter data reveals
changes in users' behavior during severe haze events. Overall, we demonstrate
that social media is a valuable source of complementary and supplementary
information for haze disaster management. Based on our methodology and
findings, an analytics tool to improve peatland fire and haze disaster
management by the Indonesian authorities is under development.
