Mapping Hidden Twitter Data For Epidemiology

jamie found this visualization of air travel, which might be usable in some sort of proxy for the spread of flu virus (to choose a random application). Jer Thorp, an artist and educator from Vancouver, Canada (and a former geneticist), searched Twitter for the phrase "Just landed in" and obtained lat/lon coordinates for both the indicated airport and the Twitter user's home location, as recorded in their Twitter profile. He then produced videos of multi-hour stretches of air travel that had been latent in the Twitter information stream.

Comments

Just landed in...

[FooAtWFU]

jail.

Re:Just landed in...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hudson River.

Nothing to do with the virus?

[4D6963]

Correct me if I'm wrong but all it does is probing on traffic by airplane by people who speak English and use Twitter. So it's a very vague approximation of people going from one place to another by airplane, am I right?

In other words you could have gotten something much better by using flight information from travel companies online, using a bunch of factors (like airplane type, route, time/date) to estimate how many people are in each flight. Which would still be of dubious use because we already know how much people transit between which airports.

So basically this new thing is useless in that it only gives a poor approximation of how many people go where, and it's of little relevance to virus spreading anyways, the only reason why it's on Slashdot's front page being the "cool" factor of using data mining on a service such as Twitter and using "epidemiology" as a poor excuse. Or am I missing something?

Re:Nothing to do with the virus?

[Cassius Corodes]

Plus if I understand this correctly it only looks at the destination and then assumes they went from their hometown. So if you are hopping around someplace it would treat each one as originating from your hometown.

Re:Nothing to do with the virus?

[4D6963]

Privacy? If someone intently shouts to the world "Hear, hear, I just landed in London!" where's the privacy issue?

Re:Nothing to do with the virus?

[MichaelSmith]

P.S. Where do you get the information as to how many people fly from which airport to which airport daily?

Airport arrivals data is often available on line. You would have to guess the number of passengers but your guess would be better than using twitter anyway.

Re:Nothing to do with the virus?

[el_flynn]

So it's a very vague approximation of people going from one place to another by airplane, am I right?

From TFA: "Now, I realize this is a far stretch from a working model to predict epidemics. But, it sure does look cool. I also I think it will be a good base for some more interesting work."

Yes, you are right. But I don't think we should be dissing the chap for trying something new. Yes, maybe the the author was trying to up his coolness factor, but kudos to the guy for putting the two disparate pieces of technology together to visualize something about H1N1.

Long commute

[4D6963]

According to their representation, the Pacific Ocean either is a no-fly zone, or the Earth is flat. I can't think of any other reason why American flights to Australia would fly above Africa.

Re:Long commute

[ceoyoyo]

There be dragons... uh, there.

Just take a look - apparently a couple of flights from Indonesia and one from New Zealand decided to take the chance and just disappeared mid Pacific. Going the other way, a couple of flights from North America that seemed to be heading in the general direction of Japan appear to have also disappeared.

Re:Long commute

[Rayban]

Obviously the location of the island. Now that we've discovered it, they're going to have to move it again.

Just landed in'); DROP TABLE Location;--

[Anonymous Coward]

For Fun! -- Signed Mrs Tables

Talk about serving the right ads to the right peep

[lamapper]

Am I the only one who sees how easily it would be to tie in this type of information with adverts to get someone to visit your restaurant while in town. Or take advantage of being a specific location and see in person Joe Blow at their new book signing, who just happens to be in the same area.

How about reminding someone of a long lost friend that lives in the area you are visiting.

Your friend has a MySpace page and is on twitter live right now, would you like to send them a Direct Message or Twit (DM/T/N)?

That guy you were chatting with last week on FriendFinder lives 4.6 miles from the airport, here is a google map to the closest IN/Out, that you two were chatting about, near their location. Would you like to invite him to join you there? (Y/N)

The possibilities are as invasive as they are endless.

Someone travels to your location allot for business, perhaps you can lure them to your hotel instead of another one, treat them right and secure a new long term customer.

This twitter user shows his GPS coordinates, they are in the car next to you right now, do you want to wave (Y/N)? It could even be hands free and talk to you like GPS devices do. lol,

Ideas, ideas, ideas....

Self absorbed twits

[icebike]

Who would have thought these self absorbed narcissists actually could serve a useful purpose in spite of themselves.

Can be abused? I hope so

[Henry V .009]

Oh fun. Everybody with a Twitter account, use the phrase "bleeding from my anus" in the next 10 minutes and see if you can't trigger a CDC Ebola alert.

Re:Can be abused? I hope so

[Anarchduke]

or result in a direct link from Adultfriendfinder