1. Enriching the Twitter Stream – Multifaceted Engagement with Citizen Scientists
Bill Teng
NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and information Services Center (GES DISC)
Team members: Arif Albayrak, Carlee Loeser, Jim Acker
Building the NASA Citizen Science Community, June 21, 2019

2. Approach to crowd-sourcing
Not require participants to explicitly “sign up” to contribute.
To effectively crowd-source, a large source of crowd is needed.
Twitter is such a source.

3. Number of tweets collected
March 2017 winter storm
Number of tweets collected
Start: :23:12 – End: :05:31
Total # tweets
# tweets w/ geo-location
# tweets w/ geo-tag (place)
Global
1,227,390
22,880
34,535
U.S.
13,269
20,349

4. Organic network of rain gauges
Space-time-varying set of “precipitation tweets”
Reading the “gauge measurements”
Develop infrastructure for processing and analyzing tweets
Enhancing quality of tweets; engaging with “active” participants
Applying processed tweets to satellite data validation
Managing tweet data

6. Tweet processing infrastructure
Local Tweet Database
Tweet Stream
(Passive & Hashtaged)
Clean
Normalize
Pre-Process
Request Query
Rain, snow etc.
Twitter API
Find Precip Type, Intensity
Classify
GPM/TRMM
&
Tweet
Co-Locate
States, Counties
Statistics
Distribution etc.
Visualize
Data
Ground Truth
Meta Data
Output
Online Process
Feed
Train
Patterns (Coef)
Test
Learning
(Tweet type, intensity)
coefficients
Training Parameters &data set
Offline Process
Prepare Training Data Set
Training Data Set
Near Real
Time
Visualization
Filter; pre-process
Compare
Manage

7. Distribution of tweets
March 2017 snow event
Distribution of tweets

8. Observed snowfall & MRMS*-tweet map
March 2017 winter storm
Observed snowfall & MRMS*-tweet map
*Multi-Radar/Multi-Sensor System (NOAA NSSL)

9. March 2017 snow event
Manhattan

10. March 2017 snow event
Manhattan
# tweets
~Midnight – 6 am
MRMS

11. Organic network of rain gauges
Space-time-varying set of “precipitation tweets”
Reading the “gauge measurements”
Develop infrastructure for processing and analyzing tweets
Enhancing quality of tweets; engaging with “active” participants
Applying processed tweets to satellite data validation
Managing tweet data

12. Enriching the Twitter stream
#mping2nasa (“active”)
scientist
random people
local news
amateur weather station
“passive”
#edumdcsp (“active”)
#twrain2nasa (“active”)
#umbrella4gpm (“active”)
mPING reports
Students
@NASA_GESDISC followers
Umbrella-as-gauge
#futurehashtag (“active”)
Future sources, …
Enriching the Twitter stream
#fb2nasa (“active”)
Facebook weather reports

13. Tweeting protocol for “active” participants
A. Content of tweet
1- Hashtag #twrain2nasa
2- Precipitation (Yes, No)
a. If Yes
i. Precipitation type
* Rain
* Freezing rain
* Sleet
* Snow
* Hail (include descriptive size, e.g., “baseball size”)
ii. Precipitation intensity
* Light
* Moderate
* Heavy
iii. Begin/end times (if known)
b. If No
i. Sunny
ii. Partly sunny/partly cloudy
iii. Cloudy
3- Additional information, if available
a. Current conditions (quantitative, if possible)
i. Temperature
* e.g., 75F
* Or cold, cool, warm, hot
ii. Humidity (e.g., 60%)
iii. Pressure
iv. Wind (calm, breezy, windy)
b. Add photo or video
4- Example tweets:
a. #twrain2nasa rain, heavy, temp 75F, windy
b. #twrain2nasa hail, baseball size, very cold
c. #twrain2nasa sunny, temp 80F, calm
B. Geolocation of tweet - Choose one of the following three options:
1- Geo-tag your tweet: This functionality is part of Twitter. In composing your tweet, select a location from the list presented. Or, enter a location in the search box. The sent tweet will contain only the bounding polygon (in lat-lon) corresponding to the specified location.
2- Include the location in your tweet, e.g., #twrain2nasa rain, heavy, Annapolis downtown MD
3- Temporarily turn on your GPS location, send your tweet (with exact lat-lon), turn off GPS.

14. Responses from “active” participants
#edumdcsp
#twrain2nasa
#mping2nasa
Nov. 2017 11 17
1,159
Jan. 2018 62 6
304

15. Enriching the Twitter stream
#mping2nasa (“active”)
scientist
random people
local news
amateur weather station
“passive”
#edumdcsp (“active”)
#twrain2nasa (“active”)
#umbrella4gpm (“active”)
mPING reports
Students
@NASA_GESDISC followers
Umbrella-as-gauge
#futurehashtag (“active”)
Future sources, …
Enriching the Twitter stream
#fb2nasa (“active”)
Facebook weather reports
Mention CoCoRaHS (Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network)
And, of course, GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment)

16. mPING (retrieve reports)
(Meteorological Phenomena Identification Near the Ground)
Request Successful {
    "count": 2, 
    "previous": null, 
    "results": [
        {
            "category": "Hail", 
            "obtime": " T02:17:00Z", 
            "description": "Pea (0.25 in.)", 
            "description_id": 13, 
            "geom": {
                "type": "Point", 
                "coordinates": [
                    , 
                   
                ]
            }, 
            "id":
        }, …

17. mPING (format for tweet)
C:Hail T: T02:17:00Z G:Point,( , ) D:13 R: #mping2nasa Where C:  category T:  time G:  geom D: description ID R: Report ID
#: hashtag

18. mPING (as tweet)
{"created_at":"Fri Oct 13 13:38: ","id": ,"id_str":" ","text":"C:Rain\/Snow T: T00:03:39Z G:Point,( , ) D:3 R: #mping2nasa","source":"\u003ca href=\" precipitation measurements\u003c\/a\u003e","truncated":false,"in_reply_to_status_id":null,"in_reply_to_status_id_str":null,"in_reply_to_user_id":null,"in_reply_to_user_id_str":null,"in_reply_to_screen_name":null,"user":{"id": ,"id_str":" ","name":"Carlee L","screen_name":"CLmping_test","location":null,"url":null,"description":null,"translator_type":"none","protected":false,"verified":false,"followers_count":0,"friends_count":0,"listed_count":0,"favourites_count":0,"statuses_count":2,"created_at":"Mon Sep 18 13:58: ","utc_offset":null,"time_zone":null,"geo_enabled":false,"lang":"en","contributors_enabled":false,"is_translator":false,"profile_background_color":"F5F8FA","profile_background_image_url":"","profile_background_image_url_https":"","profile_background_tile":false,"profile_link_color":"1DA1F2","profile_sidebar_border_color":"C0DEED","profile_sidebar_fill_color":"DDEEF6","profile_text_color":"333333","profile_use_background_image":true,"profile_image_url":"

19. Enriching the Twitter stream
#mping2nasa (“active”)
scientist
random people
local news
amateur weather station
“passive”
#edumdcsp (“active”)
#twrain2nasa (“active”)
#umbrella4gpm (“active”)
mPING reports
Students
@NASA_GESDISC followers
Umbrella-as-gauge
#futurehashtag (“active”)
Future sources, …
Enriching the Twitter stream
#fb2nasa (“active”)
Facebook weather reports

20. Mention the sensitivity issue we ran into this past spring semester.
AGU EOS article, “Gauging in the Rain” (

21. Umbrella-as-gauge
Comparing rainfall measured (curve, in red) with that by a traditional rain gauge (vertical bars, in blue).

22. Enriching the Twitter stream
#mping2nasa (“active”)
scientist
random people
local news
amateur weather station
“passive”
#edumdcsp (“active”)
#twrain2nasa (“active”)
#umbrella4gpm (“active”)
mPING reports
Students
@NASA_GESDISC followers
Umbrella-as-gauge
#futurehashtag (“active”)
Future sources, …
Enriching the Twitter stream
#fb2nasa (“active”)
Facebook weather reports

23. Engagement w/ Active Participants
“Reply” to “rain” tweet by tweeting (special Twitter account created for the experiment) w/ link to rain map.
Generate rain map from GPM, using NASA Giovanni*
Filter and extract “rain” tweet (Oct. 7, 2016) about Hurricane Matthew.
* Giovanni – Geospatial interactive Online Visualization and Analysis Infrastructure
Mention Jim’s test engagements with GSE DISC Twitter followers.
Mention Jim’s talk (next one up) which will go into more detail on Giovanni.

24. Summary
Infrastructure is generic, i.e., not specific to a given measurement, social medium, or satellite mission.
Multiple ways to engage potential citizen scientists to contribute and to learn.
Twitter data have potential for earth science applications.

25. Questions?

26. Extras

27. Example tweets
Relevant tweet
Not relevant tweet
Weather station tweet