This is a
mapping of Ushahidi mobile phone and internet reports submitted after the Haiti
Earthquake. To create the simulation a
Google earth map was imported into Netlogo with geo-tagged reports from
Ushahidi. The data is freely available
from Ushahidi here: http://community.ushahidi.com/research/. This sort of mapping has already been done
with the Haiti data but I just wanted to see if this could be done with
Netlogo. In addition to the geo-locations and timing of the reports it would
also be interesting to conduct a content analysis of the text contained in the
reports.
This type of
analysis could prove useful in identifying patterns in how crisis data are
reported, ultimately helping first-responders in future disasters. Some other potential applications for this type of
analysis might include bicycle traffic flows in Washington DC's based upon the
Capital Bikeshare program data, which is also provided free to researchers and can be downloaded here:
http://www.capitalbikeshare.com/system-data.
If anyone can think of any other geo-tagged data sources that might make
for interesting simulations it would be great to hear about them. I would also be interested in hearing of other analyses applied to similar data sets e.g. networks analysis, data mining, pattern recognition, etc. It would be especially interesting to find
data associated with the OpenGov movement www.data.gov so that researchers can help
governments improve service levels associated with local, state, and federal
governments.