{"id":3570,"date":"2013-12-15T09:29:06","date_gmt":"2013-12-15T08:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/?p=3570"},"modified":"2016-04-21T10:48:53","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T17:48:53","slug":"old-school-to-new-school-getting-down-with-tech-to-solve-crime-and-reduce-vomit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/archives\/3570","title":{"rendered":"Getting down with tech to solve crime and reduce vomit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social media isn’t just for “fun”. All the sharing that people do via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. can actually help fight crime, improve hygiene, and provide insight into how to improve services (like having less traffic jams) and keep us safe. While the humanitarian community<\/a> has been looking into how tech can be used to save lives in disaster or conflict-prone countries, you don’t have to go too far to find that the integration of tech and basic public services like policing and public health can make our lives easier, safer, and maybe just maybe filled with less vomit.<\/p>\n

In a study earlier this year, researchers at the University of Rochester used a Twitter search tool called nEmesis to identity cases of food poisoning with tweets that had GPS coordinates. In just four months<\/a>, the system collected 3.8 million tweets from more than 94,000 unique users in New York City, traced 23,000 restaurant visitors, and found 480 reports of likely food poisoning. The public health sector has typically been ahead of the curve when it comes to prevention and early warning to reduce the risk of, say, an epidemic of a virus.<\/p>\n

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Another example of how tech and social data can actually help is in crime-fighting. It might not be far off from the tech that Batman uses like the Batcomputer<\/a>. Just ask IBM<\/a> : they’ve been working with the police to setup systems that will use pattern recognition and anomaly detection technology on existing records like 911 calls, crime records, and building permit activity. Patterns revealed can help decision makers anticipate rather than just react to problems.<\/p>\n

“We’re entering a new era of police work,” says the Fort Lauderdale Police Chief<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the funniest comedy shows this year has been Brooklyn Nine-Nine<\/a> and in one of the episodes this season they even touch on the fact that “real crime-fighting” these days is about about using data and technology to solve crimes! In the episode “Old School<\/a>“, despite coming to work with a huge hangover from a drinking binge the night before, Jake, the main character, pulls together and figures out how to find the IP address of the guy who’s been stealing credit card numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social media isn’t just for “fun”. All the sharing that people do via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. can actually help fight crime, improve hygiene, and provide insight into how to improve services (like having less traffic jams) and keep us safe. While the humanitarian community has been looking into how tech can be used to … Continue reading Getting down with tech to solve crime and reduce vomit<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[25,331,330,134,313,61],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3570"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5223,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3570\/revisions\/5223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincentfung.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}