Crowd-sourcing Twitter data as a solution to emergency response to flooding in Jakarta

15785336539_294f5ee35d_oBy Dr Tomas Holderness & Dr Etienne Turpin

The early June release of the PetaJakarta.org White Paper marked the end of the first phase of the ground breaking research program. Continue reading

Floods and Social Media: Coping with the Deluge 1

Rodney ClarkeBy Associate Professor Rodney Clarke

Social media platforms are proliferating globally both in terms of the number of platforms and also the intensity of their use. Some countries use Twitter as a valid source of emergency information and incorporate it as one of the primary sources of emergency intelligence. Continue reading

Data and social media: how researchers are creating a positive impact

This post was originally published by India Lloyd at the Global Challenges blog.

PetaJakarta, shown on the computer screen, provides real-time mapping of flooding throughout Jakarta. Photo credit: Etienne Turpin

PetaJakarta, shown on the computer screen, provides real-time mapping of flooding throughout Jakarta. Photo credit: Etienne Turpin

We are inundated with information every day. The ubiquity of social media and the 24-hour news cycle means we are faced with more data than we know what to do with.

But can we harness this data overload in times of disaster? How can we break through the plethora of information to navigate our present and create resilience for the future? How can big data become a force for good, rather than a necessary evil of modern life?

These questions were at the heart of last week’s SMART Data Workshop at Sydney Business School. Continue reading