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Patrick Meier: Operational Checklist for Flying UAVs in Humanitarian Settings

An Operational Check-List for Flying UAVs in Humanitarian Settings The Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators) has taken off much faster than I expected. More than 240 members in 32 countries have joined the network since it’s launch just a few weeks ago. I was also pleasantly surprised by the number of humanitarian organizations that got in touch with me …

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Stephen E. Arnold: The [MIT] Observatory of Economic Complexity

The Observatory of Economic Complexity The future of search may just be here, in the form of a specialized search engine courtesy of MIT (quelle surprise!) The Observatory of Economic Complexity (ECI) is the result of a 2010 Master Thesis in Media Arts and Sciences by one Alexander Simoes, and enjoys the continuing support of …

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Berto Jongman: Bits, Bytes, & Stuff 1.7

BIG DATA: Rutgers Predicting Crime with Big Data, Affordably BOOK: Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA (John Rizzo as reviewed by Dina Temple-Raston) BOOK: Quantum Jumps: An Extraordinary Science of Happiness and Prosperity (Cynthia Sue Larson) CYBER: Intrusive Meta-Data CYBER: Zeus Malware Targeting Small Banks and Credit Unions DEATH: 25,000 …

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Stephen E. Arnold: WikiSummarizer Makes Charts Fun Again

WikiSummarizer Makes Charts Fun Again Instead of having to read an entire Wikipedia entry or Web site, there is a neat Web tool that aggregates all of the information and displays it in a neat, interactive chart. The WebSummarizer was developed by Context Discovery Inc. to create summaries from Web pages, documents, and plain text. …

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Patrick Meier: Social Media, Disaster Response, and the Streetlight Effect

Social Media, Disaster Response and the Streetlight Effect Posted on November 7, 2013 | 2 Comments A police officer sees a man searching for his coin under a streetlight. After helping for several minutes, the exasperated officer asks if the man is sure that he lost his coin there. The man says “No, I lost them …

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Patrick Meier: Mining Mainstream Media for Emergency Management 2.0

Mining Mainstream Media for Emergency Management 2.0 by Patrick Meier There is so much attention (and hype) around the use of social media for emergency management (SMEM) that we often forget about mainstream media when it comes to next generation humanitarian technologies. The news media across the globe has become increasingly digital in recent years—and thus analyzable …

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