Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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Crowdsourced data is not a substitute for real statistics

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Guest Beneblog by Patrick Ball, Jeff Klingner, and Kristian Lum After the earthquake in Haiti, Ushahidi organized a centralized text messaging system to allow people to inform others about people trapped under damaged buildings and other humanitarian crises. Kristian Lum has analyzed data from the same sources that the JRC team used.

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More on Using Crowdsourced Data to Find Big Picture Patterns (Take 3)

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

You're absolutely right that information quality comes from people and that data's fitness for a particular purpose is very contextual. To continue in this direction, let’s look at how people use this information. The people who are in most need of information about humanitarian disasters are the organized responders.

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