Category: Big Data

Geosimulation and Big Data: A Marriage made in Heaven or Hell?

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Call for papers: AAG 2015 – Geosimulation and Big Data: A Marriage made in Heaven or Hell?

In recent years, human emotions, intentions, moods and behaviors have been digitized to an extent previously unimagined in the social sciences. This has been in the main due to the rise of a vast array of new data, termed ‘Big Data’. These new forms of data have the potential to reshape the future directions of social science research, in particular the methods that scientists use to model and simulate spatially explicit social systems. Given the novelty of this potential “revolution” and the surprising lack of reliable behavioural insight to arise from Big Data research, it is an opportune time to assess the progress that has been made and consider the future directions of socio-spatial modelling in a world that is becoming increasingly well described by Big Data sources.

We invite methodological, theoretical and empirical papers that that engage with any aspect of geospatial modelling and the use of Big Data. We are particularly interested in the ways that insight into individual or group behavior can be elucidated from new data sources – including social media contributions, volunteered geographical information, mobile telephone transactions, individually-sensed data, crowd-sourced information, etc. – and used to improve models or simulations. Topics include, but are not limited to:
  • Using Big Data to inform individual–based models of geographical systems;
  • Translating Big Data into agent rules;
  • Elucidating behavioral information from diverse data;
  • Improving simulated agent behavior;
  • Validating agent-based models (ABM) with Big Data;
  • Ethics of data collected en masse and their use in simulation.
Please e-mail the abstract and key words with your expression of intent to Nick Malleson by 28th October, 2014. Please make sure that your abstract conforms to the AAG guidelines in relation to title, word limit and key words and as specified at http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/call_for_papers. An abstract should be no more than 250 words that describe the presentation’s purpose, methods, and conclusions as well as to include keywords.

Organizers

  • Alison Heppenstall, School of Geography, University of Leeds
  • Nick Malleson, School of Geography, University of Leeds
  • Andrew Crooks, Department of Computational Social Science, George Mason University
  • Paul Torrens, Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland
  • Ed Manley, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London

Timeline

  • 28th October, 2014: Abstract submission deadline. E-mail Nick Malleson by this date if you are interested in being in this session. Please submit an abstract and key words with your expression of intent.
  • 31st October, 2014: Session finalization and author notification
  • 3rd November, 2014: Final abstract submission to AAG, via www.aag.org. All participants must register individually via this site. Upon registration you will be given a participant number (PIN). Send the PIN and a copy of your final abstract to Nick Malleson. Neither the organizers nor the AAG will edit the abstracts.
  • 5th November, 2014: AAG registration deadline. Sessions submitted to AAG for approval.

 

Continue reading »
AAG, Big Data, Geosimulation

Geosimulation and Big Data: A Marriage made in Heaven or Hell?

Posted on by
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/101753272804937744/
Call for papers: AAG 2015 – Geosimulation and Big Data: A Marriage made in Heaven or Hell?

In recent years, human emotions, intentions, moods and behaviors have been digitized to an extent previously unimagined in the social sciences. This has been in the main due to the rise of a vast array of new data, termed ‘Big Data’. These new forms of data have the potential to reshape the future directions of social science research, in particular the methods that scientists use to model and simulate spatially explicit social systems. Given the novelty of this potential “revolution” and the surprising lack of reliable behavioural insight to arise from Big Data research, it is an opportune time to assess the progress that has been made and consider the future directions of socio-spatial modelling in a world that is becoming increasingly well described by Big Data sources.

We invite methodological, theoretical and empirical papers that that engage with any aspect of geospatial modelling and the use of Big Data. We are particularly interested in the ways that insight into individual or group behavior can be elucidated from new data sources – including social media contributions, volunteered geographical information, mobile telephone transactions, individually-sensed data, crowd-sourced information, etc. – and used to improve models or simulations. Topics include, but are not limited to:
  • Using Big Data to inform individual–based models of geographical systems;
  • Translating Big Data into agent rules;
  • Elucidating behavioral information from diverse data;
  • Improving simulated agent behavior;
  • Validating agent-based models (ABM) with Big Data;
  • Ethics of data collected en masse and their use in simulation.
Please e-mail the abstract and key words with your expression of intent to Nick Malleson by 28th October, 2014. Please make sure that your abstract conforms to the AAG guidelines in relation to title, word limit and key words and as specified at http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/call_for_papers. An abstract should be no more than 250 words that describe the presentation’s purpose, methods, and conclusions as well as to include keywords.

Organizers

  • Alison Heppenstall, School of Geography, University of Leeds
  • Nick Malleson, School of Geography, University of Leeds
  • Andrew Crooks, Department of Computational Social Science, George Mason University
  • Paul Torrens, Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland
  • Ed Manley, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London

Timeline

  • 28th October, 2014: Abstract submission deadline. E-mail Nick Malleson by this date if you are interested in being in this session. Please submit an abstract and key words with your expression of intent.
  • 31st October, 2014: Session finalization and author notification
  • 3rd November, 2014: Final abstract submission to AAG, via www.aag.org. All participants must register individually via this site. Upon registration you will be given a participant number (PIN). Send the PIN and a copy of your final abstract to Nick Malleson. Neither the organizers nor the AAG will edit the abstracts.
  • 5th November, 2014: AAG registration deadline. Sessions submitted to AAG for approval.

 

Continue reading »
AAG, Big Data, Geosimulation

From Rhythmanalyst to Rhythmconductor- Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life

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Image 1. The book cover of ‘Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life’

 
In the book, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, French sociologist Henri Lefebvre suggests ‘Rhythm’ as an alternative tool to understand and analyse everyday urban life beyond visual recognition. He argues that we can examine the true nature of cities from the human body, the basic unit of urban life, to substantial urban structures through rhythms.

 

Invisible rhythms are generating, repeating and transforming in cities. Lefebvre categorizes types of rhythm, which deeply intervene the life and make a foundation of law, institution and culture, based on its characteristics. Among them, the author particularly insists to pay attention to two aspects of rhythms that Arrhythmia which is creating discordance between or among two or more rhythms, and Eurhythmia which is staying in the state of harmony and balance. He asserts that it is important to convert Arrhythmia in the city that causes inequality and injustice to Eurhythmia which sustains healthy urban condition.

 

‘Rhythmanlysist’ is a fresh idea from the book published in 1992. Rhythmanlysist hears sounds of the city and reveals hidden systems behind visual images with sensing and analysing the change of spatial aspects in timing. As a rhythmanlysist, Lefebvre investigates Mediterranean cities. He presents some insights that the rhythms of Mediterranean cities are derived from specific geographical and climate environments, and the rhythms have created different political system and exceptional cultural diversity in contrast to Atlantic cities. Physically, it leads the development of plazas and the importance of stairways which link sloping lands.

 

Rhythmanlysist could still be a valuable concept to understand complex urban situations. However, we are living in the digital era. As Mitchell (Mitchell, 1999) denoted, the rhythms of our ordinary life are changing by digital communication. Every day tremendous data, which are invisible and inaudible, are generating, and its flows push us into the massive ocean of heterogeneous rhythms. Therefore, new Rhythmanlysist in the digital age needs other capacities. Capturing the digital data in real time and synthesizing it should be essential requirements to create or maintain Eurhythmia. While the cities of the 20th century needed Rhythmanlysist, now it is the time of ‘Rhythmconductor’ who collects digital rhythms, reorganises its tempos-meters-articulations and resonates new contexts. We can easily find good examples of Rhythmconductor like below.
 

Image 2. London Public Bike share map by Oliver O’Brien. http://bikes.oobrien.com/london/

Image 3. Analysis of Happiness on Twitter during 9th September 2008 to 31stAugust 2011.

Dodds PS,  Harris KD,  Kloumann IM,  Bliss CA,  Danforth CM  (2011) Temporal Patterns of Happiness and Information in a Global Social Network: Hedonometrics and Twitter. PLoS ONE 6(12)

 

This radical change of the rhythm gives an opportunity to redefine the scopes of each social group. Citizens collect and utilize the data by their mobile devices; furthermore, they solve complex urban problems by themselves. (Desouza and Bhagwatwar, 2012) The role of planners is challenging to make new rhythms by spreading effective information and stimulating civic participation using social media instead traditional managers’ role within mainstream planning structures. (Tayebi, 2013) Also, Scientists’ role is shifting. According to Wright (Wright, 2013), scientific researchers had focused to find reasons of urban problems until the last decade, however; their voices are getting stronger to solve problems and provide alternatives in the decision making process with geospatial data and geographical analysis.

 

You can find the detail of Lefebvre’s book from Google and Amazon.

 

Desouza, K C and Bhagwatwar, A, 2012, “Citizen Apps to Solve Complex Urban Problems” Journal of Urban Technology 19(3) 107–136.

Mitchell, W J, 1999 E-topia: “Urban life, Jim–but not as we know it” (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA).

Tayebi, A, 2013, “Planning activism: Using Social Media to claim marginalized citizens’ right to the city” Cities 32 88–93.

Wright, D, 2013, “Bridging the Gap Between Scientists and Policy Makers: Whither Geospatial? | Esri Insider” Esri Insider, http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2013/02/11/bridging-the-gap-between-scientists-and-policy-makers-whither-geospatial/.

 

 

Continue reading »
Big Data, Book, Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, Rhythmconductor, Smart city

From Rhythmanalyst to Rhythmconductor- Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life

Posted on by
 

 

 

 

Image 1. The book cover of ‘Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life’

 
In the book, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, French sociologist Henri Lefebvre suggests ‘Rhythm’ as an alternative tool to understand and analyse everyday urban life beyond visual recognition. He argues that we can examine the true nature of cities from the human body, the basic unit of urban life, to substantial urban structures through rhythms.

 

Invisible rhythms are generating, repeating and transforming in cities. Lefebvre categorizes types of rhythm, which deeply intervene the life and make a foundation of law, institution and culture, based on its characteristics. Among them, the author particularly insists to pay attention to two aspects of rhythms that Arrhythmia which is creating discordance between or among two or more rhythms, and Eurhythmia which is staying in the state of harmony and balance. He asserts that it is important to convert Arrhythmia in the city that causes inequality and injustice to Eurhythmia which sustains healthy urban condition.

 

‘Rhythmanlysist’ is a fresh idea from the book published in 1992. Rhythmanlysist hears sounds of the city and reveals hidden systems behind visual images with sensing and analysing the change of spatial aspects in timing. As a rhythmanlysist, Lefebvre investigates Mediterranean cities. He presents some insights that the rhythms of Mediterranean cities are derived from specific geographical and climate environments, and the rhythms have created different political system and exceptional cultural diversity in contrast to Atlantic cities. Physically, it leads the development of plazas and the importance of stairways which link sloping lands.

 

Rhythmanlysist could still be a valuable concept to understand complex urban situations. However, we are living in the digital era. As Mitchell (Mitchell, 1999) denoted, the rhythms of our ordinary life are changing by digital communication. Every day tremendous data, which are invisible and inaudible, are generating, and its flows push us into the massive ocean of heterogeneous rhythms. Therefore, new Rhythmanlysist in the digital age needs other capacities. Capturing the digital data in real time and synthesizing it should be essential requirements to create or maintain Eurhythmia. While the cities of the 20th century needed Rhythmanlysist, now it is the time of ‘Rhythmconductor’ who collects digital rhythms, reorganises its tempos-meters-articulations and resonates new contexts. We can easily find good examples of Rhythmconductor like below.
 

Image 2. London Public Bike share map by Oliver O’Brien. http://bikes.oobrien.com/london/

Image 3. Analysis of Happiness on Twitter during 9th September 2008 to 31stAugust 2011.

Dodds PS,  Harris KD,  Kloumann IM,  Bliss CA,  Danforth CM  (2011) Temporal Patterns of Happiness and Information in a Global Social Network: Hedonometrics and Twitter. PLoS ONE 6(12)

 

This radical change of the rhythm gives an opportunity to redefine the scopes of each social group. Citizens collect and utilize the data by their mobile devices; furthermore, they solve complex urban problems by themselves. (Desouza and Bhagwatwar, 2012) The role of planners is challenging to make new rhythms by spreading effective information and stimulating civic participation using social media instead traditional managers’ role within mainstream planning structures. (Tayebi, 2013) Also, Scientists’ role is shifting. According to Wright (Wright, 2013), scientific researchers had focused to find reasons of urban problems until the last decade, however; their voices are getting stronger to solve problems and provide alternatives in the decision making process with geospatial data and geographical analysis.

 

You can find the detail of Lefebvre’s book from Google and Amazon.

 

Desouza, K C and Bhagwatwar, A, 2012, “Citizen Apps to Solve Complex Urban Problems” Journal of Urban Technology 19(3) 107–136.

Mitchell, W J, 1999 E-topia: “Urban life, Jim–but not as we know it” (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA).

Tayebi, A, 2013, “Planning activism: Using Social Media to claim marginalized citizens’ right to the city” Cities 32 88–93.

Wright, D, 2013, “Bridging the Gap Between Scientists and Policy Makers: Whither Geospatial? | Esri Insider” Esri Insider, http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2013/02/11/bridging-the-gap-between-scientists-and-policy-makers-whither-geospatial/.

 

 

Continue reading »
Big Data, Book, Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, Rhythmconductor, Smart city

From Rhythmanalyst to Rhythmconductor- Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life

Posted on by
 

 

 

 

Image 1. The book cover of ‘Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life’

 
In the book, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, French sociologist Henri Lefebvre suggests ‘Rhythm’ as an alternative tool to understand and analyse everyday urban life beyond visual recognition. He argues that we can examine the true nature of cities from the human body, the basic unit of urban life, to substantial urban structures through rhythms.

 

Invisible rhythms are generating, repeating and transforming in cities. Lefebvre categorizes types of rhythm, which deeply intervene the life and make a foundation of law, institution and culture, based on its characteristics. Among them, the author particularly insists to pay attention to two aspects of rhythms that Arrhythmia which is creating discordance between or among two or more rhythms, and Eurhythmia which is staying in the state of harmony and balance. He asserts that it is important to convert Arrhythmia in the city that causes inequality and injustice to Eurhythmia which sustains healthy urban condition.

 

‘Rhythmanlysist’ is a fresh idea from the book published in 1992. Rhythmanlysist hears sounds of the city and reveals hidden systems behind visual images with sensing and analysing the change of spatial aspects in timing. As a rhythmanlysist, Lefebvre investigates Mediterranean cities. He presents some insights that the rhythms of Mediterranean cities are derived from specific geographical and climate environments, and the rhythms have created different political system and exceptional cultural diversity in contrast to Atlantic cities. Physically, it leads the development of plazas and the importance of stairways which link sloping lands.

 

Rhythmanlysist could still be a valuable concept to understand complex urban situations. However, we are living in the digital era. As Mitchell (Mitchell, 1999) denoted, the rhythms of our ordinary life are changing by digital communication. Every day tremendous data, which are invisible and inaudible, are generating, and its flows push us into the massive ocean of heterogeneous rhythms. Therefore, new Rhythmanlysist in the digital age needs other capacities. Capturing the digital data in real time and synthesizing it should be essential requirements to create or maintain Eurhythmia. While the cities of the 20th century needed Rhythmanlysist, now it is the time of ‘Rhythmconductor’ who collects digital rhythms, reorganises its tempos-meters-articulations and resonates new contexts. We can easily find good examples of Rhythmconductor like below.
 

Image 2. London Public Bike share map by Oliver O’Brien. http://bikes.oobrien.com/london/

Image 3. Analysis of Happiness on Twitter during 9th September 2008 to 31stAugust 2011.

Dodds PS,  Harris KD,  Kloumann IM,  Bliss CA,  Danforth CM  (2011) Temporal Patterns of Happiness and Information in a Global Social Network: Hedonometrics and Twitter. PLoS ONE 6(12)

 

This radical change of the rhythm gives an opportunity to redefine the scopes of each social group. Citizens collect and utilize the data by their mobile devices; furthermore, they solve complex urban problems by themselves. (Desouza and Bhagwatwar, 2012) The role of planners is challenging to make new rhythms by spreading effective information and stimulating civic participation using social media instead traditional managers’ role within mainstream planning structures. (Tayebi, 2013) Also, Scientists’ role is shifting. According to Wright (Wright, 2013), scientific researchers had focused to find reasons of urban problems until the last decade, however; their voices are getting stronger to solve problems and provide alternatives in the decision making process with geospatial data and geographical analysis.

 

You can find the detail of Lefebvre’s book from Google and Amazon.

 

Desouza, K C and Bhagwatwar, A, 2012, “Citizen Apps to Solve Complex Urban Problems” Journal of Urban Technology 19(3) 107–136.

Mitchell, W J, 1999 E-topia: “Urban life, Jim–but not as we know it” (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA).

Tayebi, A, 2013, “Planning activism: Using Social Media to claim marginalized citizens’ right to the city” Cities 32 88–93.

Wright, D, 2013, “Bridging the Gap Between Scientists and Policy Makers: Whither Geospatial? | Esri Insider” Esri Insider, http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2013/02/11/bridging-the-gap-between-scientists-and-policy-makers-whither-geospatial/.

 

 

Continue reading »
Big Data, Book, Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, Rhythmconductor, Smart city

Luminous Cities: offering an alternative way of geotag

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Image1. The webpage of Luminous Cities_Manhattan

Studying human behaviours and communication in time and space has been regarded as the important factor of modern urban planning. In this digital era, collecting online data and analysing the data provide an opportunity to understand the intention and the process of the behaviours and the communication which had not been revealed.
Geotag, which is attached on Social Network Service (SNS), is concerned as one of connecting link between the internet and urban. Mainly, there are two types of geotag. One is user-generated geotag that SNS users identify the places on their contents. The other is automatically generated with spatial coordination by the services. It represents the political, social and economic characteristics of the places as well as the physical location of the user or the data produced.

There are many good examples of mapping the geotag data of SNS. Eric Fischer’s well known mapping images reveal not only the density of the geotag data but also social aspects in cities such as the invisible dimensions of tourism in New York (Image 2). Twitter Languages in London by James Cheshire and Ed Manley shows the popularity of languages depends on different locations in London ((Image 3).

Image2. The mapping geotag data of locals and tourists by Eric Fischer 

Image3. Twitter Languages in London, James Cheshire and Ed Manley

Luminous Cities is the project to demonstrate the interactive map of Flickr geotag data supported by CASA at UCL and CSAP at the University of Leeds. It has developed by Gavin Baily and Sarah Bagshaw. The project does not remain the displaying density and distribution of the geotag, but offers in-detail contents of the geotag such as user, tag, time of the day and timeline over 50 cities in the world. With the multiple contents, Luminous Cities could be a platform to check out the geotag data of Flickr based on personal interest, and to view their cities from a different side. When it comes to Networking City, who is interested in protest and demonstration in the city, it would be a helpful tool to examine the relationship between protests or occupy tags of Flickr in London and actual events of them. Also, some interesting results may be emerging when we compare two data sets: Flickr and Twitter.

Image4. Berlin user geotag map from the webpage of Luminous Cities

Image5. London occupy geotag map from the webpage of Luminous Cities

Image6. Tokyo geotag map, Zoom out, from the webpage of Luminous Cities

Image7. Tokyo geotag map, Zoom in, from the webpage of Luminous Cities

You can find more things from following links.
Flickr was shown as the highest growing application in 2013 by Mashable

Mapping the world with Flickr and Twitter by Guardian

Infographic Of The Day: Using Twitter And Flickr Geotags To Map The World

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664462/infographic-of-the-day-using-twitter-and-flickr-geotags-to-map-the-world

Continue reading »
Big Data, CASA, Cities, CSAP, Eric Fischer, Flickr, geo-coded, geotag, SNS, Social Networks

Luminous Cities: offering an alternative way of geotag

Posted on by

Image1. The webpage of Luminous Cities_Manhattan

Studying human behaviours and communication in time and space has been regarded as the important factor of modern urban planning. In this digital era, collecting online data and analysing the data provide an opportunity to understand the intention and the process of the behaviours and the communication which had not been revealed.
Geotag, which is attached on Social Network Service (SNS), is concerned as one of connecting link between the internet and urban. Mainly, there are two types of geotag. One is user-generated geotag that SNS users identify the places on their contents. The other is automatically generated with spatial coordination by the services. It represents the political, social and economic characteristics of the places as well as the physical location of the user or the data produced.

There are many good examples of mapping the geotag data of SNS. Eric Fischer’s well known mapping images reveal not only the density of the geotag data but also social aspects in cities such as the invisible dimensions of tourism in New York (Image 2). Twitter Languages in London by James Cheshire and Ed Manley shows the popularity of languages depends on different locations in London ((Image 3).

Image2. The mapping geotag data of locals and tourists by Eric Fischer 

Image3. Twitter Languages in London, James Cheshire and Ed Manley

Luminous Cities is the project to demonstrate the interactive map of Flickr geotag data supported by CASA at UCL and CSAP at the University of Leeds. It has developed by Gavin Baily and Sarah Bagshaw. The project does not remain the displaying density and distribution of the geotag, but offers in-detail contents of the geotag such as user, tag, time of the day and timeline over 50 cities in the world. With the multiple contents, Luminous Cities could be a platform to check out the geotag data of Flickr based on personal interest, and to view their cities from a different side. When it comes to Networking City, who is interested in protest and demonstration in the city, it would be a helpful tool to examine the relationship between protests or occupy tags of Flickr in London and actual events of them. Also, some interesting results may be emerging when we compare two data sets: Flickr and Twitter.

Image4. Berlin user geotag map from the webpage of Luminous Cities

Image5. London occupy geotag map from the webpage of Luminous Cities

Image6. Tokyo geotag map, Zoom out, from the webpage of Luminous Cities

Image7. Tokyo geotag map, Zoom in, from the webpage of Luminous Cities

You can find more things from following links.
Flickr was shown as the highest growing application in 2013 by Mashable

Mapping the world with Flickr and Twitter by Guardian

Infographic Of The Day: Using Twitter And Flickr Geotags To Map The World

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664462/infographic-of-the-day-using-twitter-and-flickr-geotags-to-map-the-world

Continue reading »
Big Data, CASA, Cities, CSAP, Eric Fischer, Flickr, geo-coded, geotag, SNS, Social Networks

Foundations of Urban Science

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CUSP –  New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress – in launching their Masters program in Applied Urban Science and Informatics, have put together a fascinating course called Foundations of Urban Science which is being taught this fall by … Continue reading →

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Allometry, Big Data, city size, complexity, Fractals, Hierarchy, LUTI models, networks, power laws, Scaling, Urban Models

The World Protests by GDELT

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Image 1. All GDELT protest data for 2013. The image was captured from GDELT’s work. (See below)

Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) is a remarkable organisation to provide, freely, the data of all human behaviours, particularly protest, over the world since 1979. They are trying to make “real-time social sciences earth observatory” by updating the data every day. It is running by three researchers, Kalev Leetaru, Philip Schrodt and Patrick Brandt. 
 
If you visit their website and their blog, you would be surprised by their enormous data set as well as effective and nice visualisation. For example, recent GDELT’s work is showing protest movement in 2013. (Image 1) This interactive map illustrates how many protests have been raising in the world a year including Egypt, Brazil and Turkey, and we can recognise that the flame of protests are covering the world even though the data would not report all hidden protests.
 
Image 2. Syria’s civil war. The image was captured from GDELT’s work. (See below) 
 
Another map describes the terrific condition of Syria’s civil war in detail. (Image 2) Visualising the location, the number of violence per day and the period of the civil war together warns us how the situation is significant much more than just some sentences and images of broadcasting news. It was issued on The Guardian.  
 
However, the most important thing is their continuous effort to collect the data, sort it out and provide the valuable data for further research. Opening the data might not be an easy decision and it would be a extremely time-consuming work.
 
After visiting the website of GDELT, Networking City understood the importance of open data, its impacts and the power of visualisation, and promised to work hard and being more opened.
 
Continue reading »
Big Data, Data Visualisation, GDELT, Open Data, protest, Syria, urban planning

The World Protests by GDELT

Posted on by

 


Image 1. All GDELT protest data for 2013. The image was captured from GDELT’s work. (See below)

Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) is a remarkable organisation to provide, freely, the data of all human behaviours, particularly protest, over the world since 1979. They are trying to make “real-time social sciences earth observatory” by updating the data every day. It is running by three researchers, Kalev Leetaru, Philip Schrodt and Patrick Brandt. 
 
If you visit their website and their blog, you would be surprised by their enormous data set as well as effective and nice visualisation. For example, recent GDELT’s work is showing protest movement in 2013. (Image 1) This interactive map illustrates how many protests have been raising in the world a year including Egypt, Brazil and Turkey, and we can recognise that the flame of protests are covering the world even though the data would not report all hidden protests.
 
Image 2. Syria’s civil war. The image was captured from GDELT’s work. (See below) 
 
Another map describes the terrific condition of Syria’s civil war in detail. (Image 2) Visualising the location, the number of violence per day and the period of the civil war together warns us how the situation is significant much more than just some sentences and images of broadcasting news. It was issued on The Guardian.  
 
However, the most important thing is their continuous effort to collect the data, sort it out and provide the valuable data for further research. Opening the data might not be an easy decision and it would be a extremely time-consuming work.
 
After visiting the website of GDELT, Networking City understood the importance of open data, its impacts and the power of visualisation, and promised to work hard and being more opened.
 
Continue reading »
Big Data, Data Visualisation, GDELT, Open Data, protest, Syria, urban planning
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