annotating microblog posts with sensor data for emergency reporting applications

Copyright 2011 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.

Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie

Enabling Networked Knowledge

Annotating Microblog Posts with Sensor Data for Emergency Reporting

ApplicationsDavid N. Crowley, Alexandre Passant,

John G. Breslin

Electrical & Electronic EngineeringCollege of Engineering and Informatics



Why Microblogging?

Short format – 140 characters Mobile Web or Mobile Apps available for most

phones/all smartphones (Almost) Real-Time Posts Removes barriers to posting – short/mobile User Growth (Twitter)



Why Twitter?

100 million active users Growth from 65 to 200 million posts per day in 1

year Available in many languages (11), most countries Information Network/Social Network Twitter APIs Twitter Annotations



Twitter Annotations

forthcoming initiative by Twitter attach arbitrary metadata to any tweet Low limit to begin then expanding

Going beyond geotemporal annotations “type”:{“attribute”:”value”} “type”:{“title”:”avatar”}



Twitter Annotations (2)



Sensors (Smartphones)

Accelerometer Magnetometer

Digital Compass Accelerometer + Magnetometer = Orientation

Gyroscope Microphone Camera Proximity GPS Light



SIOC



SIOC (2)

Semantically Interlinked Online Communities Represents rich social data using RDF Describes Web-based discussion SIOC Types (sioct) Module

Microblog MicroblogPost



Combining SIOC & SSN



Combining SIOC & SSN (2)

Describing post and sensor metadata

Create SIOC Sensors (siocs) Module has_sensor_data

– joins sioct:MicroblogPost to ssn:Observationvalue



Annotated Microblog Post



Modelling Mobile Sensors

Activity Walking/Running/Standing Car/Bike (Moving/In Traffic)

Direction Compass – Orientation of device

Noise Levels Location through Wi-fi (without GPS) Light Levels Temperature Pressure



Scenario

Emergency Situation London Riots Natural Disasters

User can enter “Emergency Mode” in Semantic Microblogging application on mobile Device All sensor metadata available attached to post

– And available to Emergency Teams

User direction (traveling or facing) Recent activity

Noise levels Light levels



Challenges

Privacy – User data Quality of data

Availability of data Modelling sensors to add context

Sensors of varying type Varying frequency Aggregating/modelling sensor data over time

Data reliability – provenance? – user profiling? Usability – low effort posting of metadata



Future Work

Survey – to evaluate users’ desire to share sensor data

Build Mobile Semantic Microblogging application

Model sensors (Android devices) Create User Evaluations of application Different scenarios – traffic applications

annotating microblog posts with sensor data for emergency reporting applications

Technology