Sampling Shadows An Interface for Exploring Geotagged Datasets
This prototype was developed as an urban computing tool for studying spatially indexed data. With mainstream adoption of smart phone technology and more then half a decade since the normalisation of social media use, urban strategist can no longer afford to ignore the wealth of information afforded by this new resource. An average person is described to cast a digital shadow of 45gb and this number will continue to replicate at an exponential rate. So how can urban strategist tap this resource?
One area worth exploring is context awareness. Geotagging information is a way to bind meaning to space. Ranging from text that describe feelings to images that give a glimpse of life, and check-ins for location sharing, a cumulated perspective may provide strategists with greater context sensitivity.
This prototype, lays the foundation for future studies involving more sophisticated analysis. Currently, it functions as an interactive, scalable, dot density map for combining individual datasets. Acting as a gauge for sensing the scale of data generated in various urban environments, users may select arbitrary points to obtain more detail. Additionally, they have an option to save these selections to an export list for reference.
Future plans include feature extraction with semantic and image analysis along with methods for filtering across time, users, relationships, etc.
Space & Media Lab, ASRO, KULeuven Aggregation & visualisation of geo tagged Belgian social media data