SOCIAL MEDIA FOOTPRINTS OF PUBLIC PERCEPTION ON ENERGY ISSUES IN THE CONTERMINOUS UNITED STATES

Energy has been at the top of the national and global political agenda along with other concomitant challenges, such as poverty, disaster and climate change. Social perception on various energy issues, such as its availability, development and consumption deeply affect our energy future. This type of information is traditionally collected through structured energy surveys. However, these surveys are often subject to formidable costs and intensive labor, as well as a lack of temporal dimensions. Social media can provide a more cost-effective solution to collect massive amount of data on public opinions in a timely manner that may complement the survey. The purpose of this study is to use machine learning algorithms and social media conversations to characterize the spatiotemporal topics and social perception on different energy in terms of spatial and temporal dimensions. Text analysis algorithms, such as sentiment analysis and topic analysis, were employed to offer insights into the public attitudes and those prominent issues related to energy. The results show that the energy related public perceptions exhibited spatiotemporal dynamics. The study is expected to help inform decision making, formulate national energy policies, and update entrepreneurial energy development decisions

Disease surveillance systems

Recent advances in information and communication technologies have made the development and operation of complex disease surveillance systems technically feasible, and many systems have been proposed to interpret diverse data sources for health-related signals. Implementing these systems for daily use and efficiently interpreting their output, however, remains a technical challenge. This thesis presents a method for understanding disease surveillance systems structurally, examines four existing systems, and discusses the implications of developing such systems. The discussion is followed by two papers. The first paper describes the design of a national outbreak detection system for daily disease surveillance. It is currently in use at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control. The source code has been licenced under GNU v3 and is freely available. The second paper discusses methodological issues in computational epidemiology, and presents the lessons learned from a software development project in which a spatially explicit micro-meso-macro model for the entire Swedish population was built based on registry data

Harnessing the HealthMap platform for community-based disease outbreak monitoring

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-69).Due to increasing global trade and travel along with a range of environmental factors, emerging infectious diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), drug-resistant tuberculosis, and 2009 HiNi continue to have significant impact on morbidity, mortality, and commerce worldwide. Early warning and detection of outbreaks plays an important role in protecting against disease, allowing public health authorities, organizations, and citizens to implement control measures rapidly. Due to its global reach, 2009 pandemic HiNi represented not only a unique call to action for disease outbreak detection systems, but also precipitated increased public awareness of issues of emerging infection. This thesis explores the use of informal, user-contributed disease reports from the general public as a means to improve knowledge of local events and enhance early warning during the first and second waves of 2009 HiNi. Building on the established HealthMap system, which has shown the effectiveness of using news media sources for rapid detection of outbreak events, we introduced the concept of "participatory epidemiology." Through a series of software tools for Web and smartphone, we invited users from the general public to contribute their own knowledge and awareness of local activity. We deployed the system in two phases: in the first phase, users could contribute links to existing sources of online information; in the second phase, users could also contribute free-form reports of their own experiences or events in their local communities. We received over 3,000 user submissions over the course of the study period from March 2009 to April 2010. We evaluated the system by examining a subset of notable reports and analyzing their timeliness as compared to previously existing HealthMap sources, as well as a range of qualitative factors demonstrating the potential for our approach. We further evaluated submissions relating to HiNI in the U.S. by aggregating and comparing their volume to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention influenza activity metrics, finding a Pearson's correlation of 0.74. Overall, the study indicates that with the appropriate tools, everyday citizens can play an important role in identifying and reporting infectious disease activity. The system is currently in active use and further development is ongoing.by Clark C. Freifeld.S.M

APREGOAR: Development of a geospatial database applied to local news in Lisbon

Project Work presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Geographic Information Systems and ScienceHá informações valiosas em formato de texto não estruturado sobre a localização, calendarização e a essências dos eventos disponíveis no conteúdo de notícias digitais. Vários trabalhos em curso já tentam extrair detalhes de eventos de fontes de notícias digitais, mas muitas vezes não com a nuance necssária para representar com precisão onde as coisas realmente acontecem. Alternativamente, os jornalistas poderiam associar manualmente atributos a eventos descritos nos seus artigos enquanto publicam, melhorando a exatidão e a confiança nestes atributos espaciais e temporais. Estes atributos poderiam então estar imediatamente disponíveis para avaliar a cobertura temática, temporal e espacial do conteúdo de uma agência, bem como melhorar a experiência do utilizador na exploração do conteúdo, fornecendo dimensões adicionais que podem ser filtradas. Embora a tecnologia de atribuição de dimensões geoespaciais e temporais para o emprego de aplicaçãoes voltadas para o consumidor não seja novidade, tem ainda de ser aplicada à escala das notícias. Além disso, a maioria dos sistemas existentes suporta apenas uma definição pontual da localização dos artigos, que pode não representar bem o(s) local(is) real(ais) dos eventos descritos. Este trabalho define uma aplicação web de código aberto e uma base de dados espacial subjacente que suporta i) a associação de múltiplos polígonos a representar o local onde cada evento ocorre, os prazos associados aos eventos, em linha com os atributos temáticos tradicionais associados aos artigos de notícias; ii) a contextualização de cada artigo através da adição de mapas de eventos em linha para esclarecer aos leitores onde os eventos do artigo ocorrem; e iii) a exploração dos corpora adicionados através de filtros temáticos, espaciais e temporais que exibem os resultados em mapas de cobertura interactivos e listas de artigos e eventos. O projeto foi aplicado na área da grande Lisboa de Portugal. Para além da funcionalidade acima referida, este projeto constroi gazetteers progressivos que podem ser reutilizados como associações de lugares, ou para uma meta-análise mais aprofundada do lugar, tal como é percebido coloquialmente. Demonstra a facilidade com que estas dimensões adicionais podem ser incorporadas com grade confiança na precisão da definição, geridas, e alavancadas para melhorar a gestão de conteúdo das agências noticiosas, a compreensão dos leitores, a exploração dos investigadores, ou extraídas para combinação com outros conjuntos dos dados para fornecer conhecimentos adicionais.There is valuable information in unstructured text format about the location, timing, and nature of events available in digital news content. Several ongoing efforts already attempt to extract event details from digital news sources, but often not with the nuance needed to accurately represent the where things actually happen. Alternatively, journalists could manually associate attributes to events described in their articles while publishing, improving accuracy and confidence in these spatial and temporal attributes. These attributes could then be immediately available for evaluating thematic, temporal, and spatial coverage of an agency’s content, as well as improve the user experience of content exploration by providing additional dimensions that can be filtered. Though the technology of assigning geospatial and temporal dimensions for the employ of consumer-facing applications is not novel, it has yet to be applied at scale to the news. Additionally, most existing systems only support a single point definition of article locations, which may not well represent the actual place(s) of events described within. This work defines an open source web application and underlying spatial database that supports i) the association of multiple polygons representing where each event occurs, time frames associated with the events, inline with the traditional thematic attributes associated with news articles; ii) the contextualization of each article via the addition of inline event maps to clarify to readers where the events of the article occur; and iii) the exploration of the added corpora via thematic, spatial, and temporal filters that display results in interactive coverage maps and lists of articles and events. The project was applied to the greater Lisbon area of Portugal. In addition to the above functionality, this project builds progressive gazetteers that can be reused as place associations, or for further meta analysis of place as it is colloquially understood. It demonstrates the ease of which these additional dimensions may be incorporated with a high confidence in definition accuracy, managed, and leveraged to improve news agency content management, reader understanding, researcher exploration, or extracted for combination with other datasets to provide additional insights

Assessing the validity of location-based social media in the study of spatial processes

The advent of big spatial data has created new opportunities for studying geographic phenomena. Open mapping projects, citizen science initiatives, and location-based social media all fall under the umbrella of volunteered geographic information and are now frequently used spatial data sources. The fact that these sources are user-contributed as opposed to gathered by experts has raised significant concerns over data quality. While data accuracy, particularly in open mapping projects (e.g., OpenStreetMap), has been given considerable attention, far less has been paid to data validity, specifically on location-based social media. In this three article dissertation, I explore the validity of location-based social media in the study of spatial processes. In the first article, I implement a survey on the Oklahoma State campus to explore college students' behaviors and perceptions of location-based social media and note differences in terms of gender, race, and academic standing. The second and third articles are empirical studies utilizing geolocated data from Twitter, a popular social media platform. The second article makes use of precise location data (e.g., latitude - longitude) and uses geographically weighted regression to explore the patterns of non-English Twitter usage in Houston, Texas. The third article uses general location data (e.g., city) to explore the patterns of #BlackLivesMatter and counter-protest content across the states of Louisiana and Texas. The results of these studies collectively provide an optimistic, though cautionary, outlook on the use of location-based social media data in geography

Abstracts: HASTAC 2017: The Possible Worlds of Digital Humanities

The document contains abstracts for HASTAC 2017

Urban Informatics

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently – to become ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of ‘big’ data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity

Urban Informatics

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently – to become ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of ‘big’ data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity

Mapping and the Citizen Sensor

Maps are a fundamental resource in a diverse array of applications ranging from everyday activities, such as route planning through the legal demarcation of space to scientific studies, such as those seeking to understand biodiversity and inform the design of nature reserves for species conservation. For a map to have value, it should provide an accurate and timely representation of the phenomenon depicted and this can be a challenge in a dynamic world. Fortunately, mapping activities have benefitted greatly from recent advances in geoinformation technologies. Satellite remote sensing, for example, now offers unparalleled data acquisition and authoritative mapping agencies have developed systems for the routine production of maps in accordance with strict standards. Until recently, much mapping activity was in the exclusive realm of authoritative agencies but technological development has also allowed the rise of the amateur mapping community. The proliferation of inexpensive and highly mobile and location aware devices together with Web 2.0 technology have fostered the emergence of the citizen as a source of data. Mapping presently benefits from vast amounts of spatial data as well as people able to provide observations of geographic phenomena, which can inform map production, revision and evaluation. The great potential of these developments is, however, often limited by concerns. The latter span issues from the nature of the citizens through the way data are collected and shared to the quality and trustworthiness of the data. This book reports on some of the key issues connected with the use of citizen sensors in mapping. It arises from a European Co-operation in Science and Technology (COST) Action, which explored issues linked to topics ranging from citizen motivation, data acquisition, data quality and the use of citizen derived data in the production of maps that rival, and sometimes surpass, maps arising from authoritative agencies