Lockheed researching Twitter, YouTube for disaster response
Lockheed Martin Corp.'s advanced lab in New Jersey is counting tweets as part of its research on how to track and analyze social media use for disaster response.
Lockheed Martin Corp. is researching how Twitter and other social media are used in incident and disaster communication and response to find out if those tweets can be analyzed to obtain useful information for federal agencies, according to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Lab in Cherry Hill, N.J., is sponsoring the research. Since August 2009, the team has been tracking tweets on Twitter, as well as images on YouTube and Flickr.
The Office of Naval Research, an agency in the Department of Defense, has given the lab and its partner, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, a two-year grant of $1.1 million, the newspaper said.
The aim of the research is to create computerized simulations of how social-media users react during disasters in order to test new tools, the story said.
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