I’ve written on “Crisis Mapping Analytics” before but the subject warrants more attention. When I looked into developing conflict maps for FAST back in 2004, I realized that the conflict early warning community was simply following in the footsteps of the disaster management community. The latter have been developing all sorts of crisis maps for decades.
Why the lag? Most likely because the majority of conflict data is not geo-referenced (beyond the country level, or admin 1). We’ve also been more interested in the temporal dimension of conflict forecasting rather than the spatial dimension—even though the latter can reveal important spatial patterns useful for temporal forecasting. In any case, the disaster community continues to be in the lead vis-a-vis crisis mapping. Of course, they have the advantage of drawing on a wide network of physical sensors around the world to monitor spatially and in real time such hazards as earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. See for example the real-time updated maps by GDACS and Havaria below.
The latest in these developments is HealthMap, which is supported by Google.org’s Predict and Prevent Initiative. As reported by Wired, the underlying algorithm parses text from Google News and the World Health Organization to populate the map.
But that’s not all, the algorithm also parses discussion groups, filtering the information and boiling it down into mapped data which can be used to track new disease outbreaks.
HealthMap goes beyond the standard mashup and is more like a small-scale implementation of the long-awaited semantic web. [...]
In a study published this March in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, the researchers found that their automated classification system was accurate 84 percent of the time. Algorithm improvements have pushed accuracy close to 90 percent now, according to the researchers. [...]
Right now, the researchers are focused on adding more sources, particularly in other languages, as well as improving their methodologies.
Freifeld and Brownstein are looking into using more social media sources, but they’ve encountered a problem that most internet users are already familiar with: There’s too much noise.
“We have certainly explored looking at more free and noisier sources like blogs and things like Twitter,” Freifeld said. “But they pose the problem of capturing a good quality signature from all that stuff.”
Is the conflict early warning/response field likely to follow suite?
Back in 2006, Google.org head Larry Brilliant told Wired.com about his vision for a service that looks a lot like HealthMap.
“I envision a kid (in Africa) getting online and finding that there is an outbreak of cholera down the street. I envision someone in Cambodia finding out that there is leprosy across the street,” Brilliant said.
Healthmap is not quite there yet vis-a-vis spatial resolution but the question is whether a similar platform for (micro) conflict monitoring would bridge the warning-response gap if it could be operationalized?
9 responses so far ↓
El Oso » Archive » Should Patients Control Their Own Medical Records? Will Google Health Save Lives? // July 23, 2008 at 11:31 am |
[...] worldwide. Results can be filtered by news source, disease, and country. The Wired article and Patrick Philippe Meier describe how that data mapping can be used to track new disease [...]
NearMap Better Than Google Maps for Crisis Mapping? « iRevolution // July 25, 2008 at 1:58 am |
[...] If NearMap (or a competing company) broadens its scope to rural populations, the technology could be a particularly useful tool for the purposes of data collection and crisis mapping. [...]
Powering Crisis Mapping with Google Earth « iRevolution // August 10, 2008 at 2:14 am |
[...] data that is visually displayed can be analyzed quantitatively within the same interface. Recent crisis mapping initiatives are certainly breaking new ground, but they would be even more useful if they included a meaningful [...]
Crisis Mapping the Conflict in Georgia « iRevolution // August 11, 2008 at 11:34 pm |
[...] important information, which is likely changing every hour. This is precisely when we need a crisis mapping platform that enables field-based organizations and local communities to text in important information on [...]
The Past and Future of Crisis Mapping « iRevolution // October 18, 2008 at 3:49 pm |
[...] to the map. We need both. For the automated feeds, I’m thinking of an approach similar to Havaria and HealthMap which I’ve written about [...]
Global Incident Map « iRevolution // November 15, 2008 at 4:44 pm |
[...] this with other automated crisis maps such as the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS), Havaria and [...]
Detecting Rumors with Web-based Text Mining System « Conflict Early Warning and Early Response // February 14, 2009 at 11:51 pm |
[...] Argus, ProMedMail, EpiSpider and HealthMap. I’ve blogged about these initiatives here and here but BioCaster combines the following functionalities within a single [...]
A Brief History of Crisis Mapping « iRevolution // March 12, 2009 at 4:23 am |
[...] events. Examples of such platforms include the Global Disaster Alert and Crisis System (GDACS), Havaria and HealthMap. Even more recent are mobile crowdsourcing platforms for the dynamic [...]
Video Introduction to Crisis Mapping « iRevolution // April 27, 2009 at 11:09 pm |
[...] Crisis Mapping and Data Visualization [...]