The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).
If you are a PyQGIS developer, you probably already stumbled upon a situation where you needed to look at the signature of a QGIS function, and you dive into the C++ documentation or source code. This is not the friendliest … Continue reading →
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If you are a PyQGIS developer, you probably already stumbled upon a situation where you needed to look at the signature of a QGIS function, and you dive into the C++ documentation or source code. This is not the friendliest … Continue reading →
In November 1986 I visited SunYatSen University and gave a public lecture about Urban Modelling. China was a very different world then, no cars, no computers, no email, barely functioning electricity. And of course it was before laptops, networks, hand-held … Continue reading →
Thanks to the power of Reddit the “Population Lines” print (buy here) I created back in 2013 has attracted a huge amount of interest in the past week or so (a Europe only version made by Henrik Lindberg made the Reddit front page). There’s been lots of subsequent discussion about it’s inspiration, effectiveness as a form of […]
Continue reading »GIM International (press release) (subscription) (blog) |
Counting Down: Looking Ahead to GEO Business 2017
GIM International (press release) (subscription) (blog) are panellists Ed Manley, lecturer in smart cities at the University College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA); Miranda Sharp, head of smart cities practice at Ordnance Survey; Ed Parsons, geospatial technologist at Google; and Mike … |
GIM International (press release) (subscription) (blog) |
Counting Down: Looking Ahead to GEO Business 2017
GIM International (press release) (subscription) (blog) are panellists Ed Manley, lecturer in smart cities at the University College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA); Miranda Sharp, head of smart cities practice at Ordnance Survey; Ed Parsons, geospatial technologist at Google; and Mike … |
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Unmissable conference line-up featuring keynote presentations from HS2’s Sadie Morgan, Ordnance Survey’s CEO …
DirectionsMag.com (press release) are panellists Ed Manley, lecturer in smart cities at the University College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA); Miranda Sharp, head of smart cities practice at Ordnance Survey; Ed Parsons, geospatial technologist at Google; and Mike … |
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Unmissable conference line-up featuring keynote presentations from HS2’s Sadie Morgan, Ordnance Survey’s CEO …
DirectionsMag.com (press release) are panellists Ed Manley, lecturer in smart cities at the University College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA); Miranda Sharp, head of smart cities practice at Ordnance Survey; Ed Parsons, geospatial technologist at Google; and Mike … |
Unmissable conference line-up featuring keynote presentations from HS2’s Sadie Morgan, Ordnance Survey’s CEO Nigel Clifford, & ESRI’s Charles Kennelly DirectionsMag.com-Leading organisations from across the geospatial industry, including Ord…
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Specifically we combined actors (e.g. twitter uses), locations (e.g. where the tweets originated) and concepts (e.g. emerging narratives such as pregnancy) to gain insights on the mechanisms that drive participation, contributions, and interactions on social media during a disease outbreak. Below you can read a summary of our paper along with some of the figures which highlight our methodology and findings.
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| An overview of the Twitter narrative analysis approach, starting with data collection, and proceeding with preprocessing and data analysis to identify narrative events, which can be used to build an event storyline. |
Abstract:
Background: The recent Zika outbreak witnessed the disease evolving from a regional health concern to a global epidemic. During this process, different communities across the globe became involved in Twitter, discussing the disease and key issues associated with it. This paper presents a study of this discussion in Twitter, at the nexus of location, actors, and concepts.
Objective: Our objective in this study was to demonstrate the significance of 3 types of events: location related, actor related, and concept- related for understanding how a public health emergency of international concern plays out in social media, and Twitter in particular. Accordingly, the study contributes to research efforts toward gaining insights on the mechanisms that drive participation, contributions, and interaction in this social media platform during a disease outbreak.
Methods: We collected 6,249,626 tweets referring to the Zika outbreak over a period of 12 weeks early in the outbreak (December 2015 through March 2016). We analyzed this data corpus in terms of its geographical footprint, the actors participating in the discourse, and emerging concepts associated with the issue. Data were visualized and evaluated with spatiotemporal and network analysis tools to capture the evolution of interest on the topic and to reveal connections between locations, actors, and concepts in the form of interaction networks.
Results: The spatiotemporal analysis of Twitter contributions reflects the spread of interest in Zika from its original hotspot in South America to North America and then across the globe. The Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization had a prominent presence in social media discussions. Tweets about pregnancy and abortion increased as more information about this emerging infectious disease was presented to the public and public figures became involved in this.
Conclusions: The results of this study show the utility of analyzing temporal variations in the analytic triad of locations, actors, and concepts. This contributes to advancing our understanding of social media discourse during a public health emergency of international concern.
Keywords: Zika Virus; Social Media; Twitter Messaging; Geographic Information Systems.
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| Spatiotemporal participation patterns and identifiable clusters over 4 of our twelve week study. The top left panel shows the data during the first week, and time progresses from left to right and from top to bottom towards . |
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| Subsets of the full retweet network pertaining to the WHO (left) and CDC (right), and clusters identified within them. Magenta clusters are centered upon health entities, green upon news organizations, orange upon political entities. |
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| Visualizing a narrative storyline across locations (blue), actors (red), and concepts (green). |
Full Reference:
Stefanidis, A., Vraga, E., Lamprianidis, G., Radzikowski, J., Delamater, P.L., Jacobsen, K.H., Pfoser, D., Croitoru, A. and Crooks, A.T. (2017). “Zika in Twitter: Temporal Variations of Locations, Actors, and Concepts”, JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 3 (2): e22. (pdf)
As normal, any feedback or comments are most welcome.
Specifically we combined actors (e.g. twitter uses), locations (e.g. where the tweets originated) and concepts (e.g. emerging narratives such as pregnancy) to gain insights on the mechanisms that drive participation, contributions, and interactions on social media during a disease outbreak. Below you can read a summary of our paper along with some of the figures which highlight our methodology and findings.
|
| An overview of the Twitter narrative analysis approach, starting with data collection, and proceeding with preprocessing and data analysis to identify narrative events, which can be used to build an event storyline. |
Abstract:
Background: The recent Zika outbreak witnessed the disease evolving from a regional health concern to a global epidemic. During this process, different communities across the globe became involved in Twitter, discussing the disease and key issues associated with it. This paper presents a study of this discussion in Twitter, at the nexus of location, actors, and concepts.
Objective: Our objective in this study was to demonstrate the significance of 3 types of events: location related, actor related, and concept- related for understanding how a public health emergency of international concern plays out in social media, and Twitter in particular. Accordingly, the study contributes to research efforts toward gaining insights on the mechanisms that drive participation, contributions, and interaction in this social media platform during a disease outbreak.
Methods: We collected 6,249,626 tweets referring to the Zika outbreak over a period of 12 weeks early in the outbreak (December 2015 through March 2016). We analyzed this data corpus in terms of its geographical footprint, the actors participating in the discourse, and emerging concepts associated with the issue. Data were visualized and evaluated with spatiotemporal and network analysis tools to capture the evolution of interest on the topic and to reveal connections between locations, actors, and concepts in the form of interaction networks.
Results: The spatiotemporal analysis of Twitter contributions reflects the spread of interest in Zika from its original hotspot in South America to North America and then across the globe. The Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization had a prominent presence in social media discussions. Tweets about pregnancy and abortion increased as more information about this emerging infectious disease was presented to the public and public figures became involved in this.
Conclusions: The results of this study show the utility of analyzing temporal variations in the analytic triad of locations, actors, and concepts. This contributes to advancing our understanding of social media discourse during a public health emergency of international concern.
Keywords: Zika Virus; Social Media; Twitter Messaging; Geographic Information Systems.
|
| Spatiotemporal participation patterns and identifiable clusters over 4 of our twelve week study. The top left panel shows the data during the first week, and time progresses from left to right and from top to bottom towards . |
|
| Subsets of the full retweet network pertaining to the WHO (left) and CDC (right), and clusters identified within them. Magenta clusters are centered upon health entities, green upon news organizations, orange upon political entities. |
|
| Visualizing a narrative storyline across locations (blue), actors (red), and concepts (green). |
Full Reference:
Stefanidis, A., Vraga, E., Lamprianidis, G., Radzikowski, J., Delamater, P.L., Jacobsen, K.H., Pfoser, D., Croitoru, A. and Crooks, A.T. (2017). “Zika in Twitter: Temporal Variations of Locations, Actors, and Concepts”, JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 3 (2): e22. (pdf)
As normal, any feedback or comments are most welcome.
Londoners will be very familiar with the crowded London Underground services and their famous diagrammatic Tube Map, but might be less familiar with another public transport network – boats on the River Thames. Yes, you can commute to work by catamaran – as long as you live and work close to the river. London’s river […]
Continue reading »A fruitful finale to Internet Economy Summit7thSpace Interactive (press release)… the City of Los Angeles, Ms Lilian Coral; the Chairman of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis of the University College London, Professor Michael Batty; and the Co…
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Opening address by S for IT at Internet Economy Summit 2017 Thematic Forum “Smart City for Better Living”
7thSpace Interactive (press release) Today, we are privileged to have Ms Lilian Coral, Chief Data Officer for the City of Los Angeles from the United States, and Professor Michael Batty, Chair of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis of University College London, who will speak to us … |
The last few days I have been attending the Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting in Boston. A common theme at the AAG sessions I attended (to me at least) seemed to be the rise of new sources of data which give us …
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The last few days I have been attending the Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting in Boston. A common theme at the AAG sessions I attended (to me at least) seemed to be the rise of new sources of data which give us …
Continue reading »
The last few days I have been attending the Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting in Boston. A common theme at the AAG sessions I attended (to me at least) seemed to be the rise of new sources of data which give us …
Continue reading »There is motion in architecture. Not at first glance, but if one starts looking it appears in most aspects, being this the movement of people, goods or materials to building parts such as doors, windows or blinds. Even by design buildings can move. See…
Continue reading »There is motion in architecture. Not at first glance, but if one starts looking it appears in most aspects, being this the movement of people, goods or materials to building parts such as doors, windows or blinds. Even by design buildings can move. See…
Continue reading »There is motion in architecture. Not at first glance, but if one starts looking it appears in most aspects, being this the movement of people, goods or materials to building parts such as doors, windows or blinds. Even by design buildings can move. See for example designs by Frank Gerry, Himmelb(l)au or the late Zaha Hadid.
However, noting makes architecture move more than light. It continually transforms and changes the shape and appearance of buildings.
Shifting Concrete — Video Mapping. Video by WECOMEINPEACE on Vimeo.
edited, 2017-10-25
Full Reference to the Introduction:
Crooks, A.T., Schechtner, K., Day, A.K and Hudson-Smith, A (2017), Creating Smart Buildings and Cities, IEEE Pervasive Computing, 16 (2): 23-25. (pdf)
Full Reference to the Introduction:
Crooks, A.T., Schechtner, K., Day, A.K and Hudson-Smith, A (2017), Creating Smart Buildings and Cities, IEEE Pervasive Computing, 16 (2): 23-25. (pdf)
This year is the 50th Anniversary of Regional Studies, the journal. Peter Hall was the first editor and my early years as a lecturer coincided with his stewardship of the journal and his role as Head of Department of Geography … Continue reading →
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