ASU computer science students are pictured conducting a simulated public disaster situation as a test for their software program designed to help coordinate a crisis-response operations. Photo: Jessica Slater/ASU
New Scientist magazine took note of students in the Data Mining and Machine Learning Lab at Arizona State University who are exploring ways to expand the societal usefulness of social media.
Three teams of computer science students overseen by lab director Huan Liu are each working on separate but related projects – TweetTracker, TweetXplorer and the ASU Coordination Tracker.
Liu is a professor in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, one of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.
The projects are aimed at making social media an effective tool for communications that would support humanitarian aid and disaster relief efforts, as well as national defense missions.
One project focusing on how to use Twitter as a source of credible information during a crisis such as a natural disaster or political turmoil drew interest from a writer for New Scientist who follows advances in technology. Read the report.
Read more details about all three projects and see the technical report on the endeavors.
