Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

April 29, 2012

Movement in Manhattan: Mapping the Speed and Direction of Twitter Users

Filed under: Graphics,Visualization — Patrick Durusau @ 2:43 pm

Movement in Manhattan: Mapping the Speed and Direction of Twitter Users

Information Aesthetics writes:

Inspired by the animated wind map that was posted a little while ago, professional programmer Jeff Clark has explored how people move about in a city. The result, titled Movement in Manhattan [neoformix.com], visualizes the speed and direction of Twitter users in Manhattan, New York.

The visualization is based on a large collection of geo-located tweets that were sent in a 4-hour time-window by the same users. These tweets were used as samples that together construct a vector field representing the average flow of people within a specific area. Particles, representing people, were released at locations where actual tweets were recorded and their subsequent movement was determined by the flow field.

Interesting in its own right but combined with other data:

  • events, natural and/or man-made
  • location/movement of authorities
  • location/movement of other groups
  • location/movement of civilians
  • etc.

it could be part of a real-time tactical display.

The advantage of a topic map being that the type and range of data isn’t hard wired in.

Once you are “in country,” wherever you define that to be, here, there, etc., your information feeds can fit you situation. And change when your situation changes.

Sans long development cycles, contract negotiations and the usual mid-level management antics.

All of which is amusing except when you are the one being shelled.

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