A CyberGIS Environment for Near-Real-Time
Spatial Analysis of Social Media Data
Shaowen Wang
CyberInfrastructure and Geospatial Information Laboratory (CIGI)
Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science
Department of Computer Science
Department of Urban and Regional Planning
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
NSF-CDI Specialist Meeting
Knowledge Discovery in Cyberspace and Big Data
San Diego, CA
August 7, 2013

Cyberinfrastructure – A Simplified View
Data / Information
People
Integration
Collaboration
Computing Communication

Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Examples www.opensciencegrid.org
www.xsede.org
http://lakjeewa.blogspot.com/20
11/09/what-is-cloudcomputing.html

CyberGIS – A Tetrahedron View
Data / Information
Geo
Spatial
CyberGIS
Computing Communication

What is special about “G” in CyberGIS?
• Location
• Place
• Space
• Spatiotemporal o Integration o Synthesis

CyberGIS FluMapper

Demo

Questions – Scientific Problem Solving
• How to detect, represent, and communicate spatiotemporal patterns of flu risk?
• How to reveal spatial diffusion trajectories across various spatiotemporal scales?

Wang , S., Cao, G., Zhang, Z., Zhao, Y., and Padmanabhan, A. 2012. “A CyberGIS Environment for
Analysis of LocationBased Social Media Data.” In: Location-Based Computing and Services, 2nd
Edition, ed. A. K. Hassan and H. Amin, CRC Press, pages: 187-205

FluMapper Components
• Data collection and processing o Collects, processes and stores streaming data from Twitter in near real time o Scalable services to query raw and derived data
• Spatiotemporal data model o Provides aggregated data and statistics at multiple scales for efficient information retrieval o At the finest scale, the conterminous United States is represented as a field of 30-arc second resolution
• Exploratory data analysis o Kernel density estimation (KDE) o Monte-Carlo simulations
• Flow mapping o Single-source flow mapping is applied to depict movement patterns

Spatiotemporal Data Cube
(May 23 ~ June 5, 2013)

A 2D Illustrative Example

Questions – CyberGIS
• How to model and analyze big data that are not collected for the purpose of intended spatiotemporal analysis?
• How to integrate hybrid spatiotemporal analyses?
• How to replicate and validate such analyses?
• What are the key CyberGIS characteristics?
• What are the basic building blocks of CyberGIS ?

NSF CyberGIS Project
$4.43 million, Year: 2010-1015
Principal Investigator
– Shaowen Wang
Co-Principal Investigators
– Luc Anselin
– Budhendra Bhaduri
– Timothy Nyerges
– Nancy Wilkins-Diehr
Senior Personnel
– Michael Goodchild
– Sergio Rey
– Xuan Shi
– Marc Snir
– E. Lynn Usery
Project Staff
– ASU: Wenwen Li and Rob Pahle
– ORNL:
Ranga Raju Vatsavai
– SDSC:
Choonhan Youn
– UIUC: Yan Liu and
Anand
Padmanabhan
– Graduate and undergraduate students
Industrial Partner: Esri
– Steve Kopp

Overarching Goal
• Establish CyberGIS as a fundamentally new software framework comprising a seamless integration of advanced cyberinfrastructure, GIS, and spatial analysis and modeling capabilities and, thus, leads to widespread scientific breakthroughs and broad societal impacts
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Long Tail – CyberGIS for Whom?
CyberGIS
Toolkit
CyberGIS
Gateway
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GISolve Middleware
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Integration Framework
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Wang, S., Anselin, L., Bhaduri, B., Crosby, C., Goodchild, M. F., Liu, Y., and Nyerges , T. L. “CyberGIS
Software: A Synthetic Review and Integration Roadmap.” International Journal of Geographical Information
Science , DOI:10.1080/13658816.2013.776049.

CyberGIS Gateway – Broad Approach –
Lowering Entry Door to CyberGIS Analytics
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CyberGIS Toolkit – Deep Approach
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Integrated with advanced cyberinfrastructure
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Plug and play
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Geo/spatial as an integration axis
Open
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

Access
Community
Source
Service
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Science Drivers and Applications
• Climate science
• Emergency management
• Geographic information science
• Geography and spatial sciences
• Hydrology
• Humanities
• Political science
• Public health
• Sustainability science
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Cyber
Cyber + GIS > Cyber | GIS
GIS
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Education and Workforce
• Curriculum and pedagogy
• Open ecosystems o CyberGIS Gateway o CyberGIS Toolkit
• Partnerships
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Data-Intensive Sciences and Applications
Space-Time Integration & Synthesis
CyberGIS
Toolkit
CyberGI
S
Gateway
GISolve
Middleware
Cyberinfrastructure

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A collaborative software framework encompassing many research fields

Geo

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Spatial
Empowering numerous applications and sciences
Seamless integration of advanced cyberinfrastructure,
GIS, and spatial analysis and modeling
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Capable of handling huge volumes of data, complex analysis and visualization required for many challenging applications
Empower high-performance and collaborative geospatial problem solving
Gain fundamental understanding of scalable and sustainable CyberGIS ecosystems
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Federal Agencies
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Department of Energy’s Office of Science
National Science Foundation
– BCS-0846655
– EAR-1239603
– OCI-1047916
– PHY-0621704
– PHY-1148698
– TeraGrid/XSEDE SES070004
Industry
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Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri)
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI)
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Thanks!
• Comments/Questions?
• shaowen@illinois.edu