Visualization

Crowdsourcing Democracy Through Social Media

Sun, 2011-10-16 00:55 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Tim Siftar

Georgia Tech

ATLANTA – Oct. 11, 2011 – Today the citizens of Liberia will participate in just their second presidential election since the country emerged from a brutal civil war in 2003, and in such an environment the specter of violence or other unrest is never far away. But what if social media, a Georgia Tech professor is asking, could identify and even help prevent dangerous situations from occurring?

When nearly 40 million Nigerians took to the polls last April to elect a new president, many of them went online to share comments about their chosen candidates on blogs, Twitter or other social media platforms. They also used these new media tools to report what they saw. “Listening” to much of it was Georgia Tech Associate Professor Michael Best, which just might have saved a few lives.

During the election, Best provided technical support for a Nigerian group that wanted to use social media as a means for tracking the election process and identifying any problems that cropped up. Best and his team of researchers designed a social media aggregator tool that could pull content from about 20 different sources (including Twitter) and analyze the data in real time using keywords.

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IT and Information Sharing Environments for Community Health Resilience

Thu, 2011-09-29 09:44 — mdmcdonald

Information Technology (IT) and Information Sharing Environments (ISEs) are crucial to the evolution of community health resilience. Most people working to improve community health resilience do not understand the nuances of Information Sharing Environments, and how the rapid shifts in IT, mobile devices, social media, cloud computing, peer to peer parallel processing, smart grids, and the linking of millions of people, mobile devices, computers, and sensors are creating a societal mind, which is transforming community health resilience and the health and human security of Americans.

If you have thoughts on these topics, please comment within this collaboratory thread.

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WorldRiskReport 2011

Wed, 2011-09-14 11:09 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Joyce Fedeczko

http://www.ehs.unu.edu/article/read/worldriskreport-2011

Read about it here:
http://web.docuticker.com/go/docubase/65040

WorldRiskReport 2011
September 9, 2011 21:39
Source: United Nations University

From the website: http://www.ehs.unu.edu/file/get/9018

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Capacity

Disaster Risk Reduction

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Supercomputer Predicts Revolution

Wed, 2011-09-14 10:57 — Kathy Gilbeaux

BBC - September 9, 2011

Sentiment mining showed a sharp change in tone around Egypt ahead of President Mubarak's ousting

Feeding a supercomputer with news stories could help predict major world events, according to US research.

A study, based on millions of articles, charted deteriorating national sentiment ahead of the recent revolutions in Libya and Egypt.

While the analysis was carried out retrospectively, scientists say the same processes could be used to anticipate upcoming conflict.

The system also picked up early clues about Osama Bin Laden's location.

Kalev Leetaru, from the University of Illinois' Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts and Social Science, presented his findings in the journal First Monday.

Mood and location

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Improved Response to Disasters and Outbreaks by Tracking Population Movements with Mobile Phone Network Data: A Post-Earthquake Geospatial Study in Haiti

Fri, 2011-09-02 00:44 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Abstract

Background

Population movements following disasters can cause important increases in morbidity and mortality. Without knowledge of the locations of affected people, relief assistance is compromised. No rapid and accurate method exists to track population movements after disasters. We used position data of subscriber identity module (SIM) cards from the largest mobile phone company in Haiti (Digicel) to estimate the magnitude and trends of population movements following the Haiti 2010 earthquake and cholera outbreak.

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Cellphones Could Help Doctors Stay Ahead Of An Epidemic

Fri, 2011-09-02 00:33 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Michael Kraft

by Christopher Joyce - npr.org - August 31, 2011

Two women check their cellphones as they hawk their wares on a bridge over the Artibonite River, whose waters are believed to be the source of Haiti's 2010 cholera outbreak. Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

The year 2010 was a very bad one for Haiti. It started with an earthquake that killed over 300,000 people, mostly in the crowded capital of Port-au-Prince. After that, cholera originating in a U.N. camp broke out in a northern province and eventually spread to the city.

But public health researchers learned something useful from the tragedy: Cellphones can help stem an unfolding epidemic and funnel aid to the needy.

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Software Uses Twitter To Track Dengue Outbreaks In Brazil

Wed, 2011-07-20 16:15 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Mary Suzanne Kivlighan

Kaiser Family Foundation - July 19, 2011

The New Scientist reports on a software program that is being used "to identify a high correlation between the time and place where people tweet they have dengue and the official statistics for where the disease appears each season."

Researchers at two Brazilian National Institutes of Science and Technology worked together to create the software, which filters tweets containing the word "dengue" and user location details. "Dengue outbreaks occur every year in Brazil, but exactly where varies every season. It can take weeks for medical notifications to be centrally analyzed, creating a headache for health authorities planning where to concentrate resources," the publication notes. Using Twitter could speed up response time, according to Wagner Meira, a computer scientist at the Federal University of Minus Gerais who led the study (Corbyn, 7/18).

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World Bank Is Opening Its Treasure Chest of Data

Mon, 2011-07-04 17:18 — Kathy Gilbeaux

World Bank - Washington D.C.

. . . "the most valuable currency of the World Bank isn’t its money — it is its information" . . .

. . . "The bank, he says, is essentially widening the circle of people it can brainstorm with." . . .

. . . "Having created models for open-sourcing and crowd-sourcing, the bank is now moving toward mash-ups. A new Mapping for Results program offers interactive maps pinpointing locations of almost 3,000 bank projects in more than 16,000 places worldwide. Links open up pages with information about each project, and users can add overlays that show, say, where infant mortality is highest to see whether the bank’s work in those areas matches the need.

The program is sensitive because it involves releasing data provided by client governments and others, but the hope is that it will prompt these parties to link their own data on economic and social development to the site or otherwise make it available." . . .

World Bank Is Opening Its Treasure Chest of Data

HeraldTribune.com - Stephanie Strom - July 3, 2011

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