Geosocial data (or location-based social data) not only has a proven impact on the Indian business model but also proved to be valuable for data-driven governance by providing recommender systems, traffic safety, health care, etc. The purpose of this blog is to explain what geosocial data is, how it works, and to provide deeper insight with an example using Indian cases.
The world is transforming into a complex set of geo-social systems interconnected by networks, including transportation networks, telecommunications, and the internet. The geosocial system is the process of turning self-generated data into knowledge of 6W (who, which, what, when, where, and why) enable communities to measure their own resilience. Location intelligence has a vital share in connecting human life consider linking Global positioning system (GPS), which track user’s location, along with other vital features such as instant messaging location-tagged media content, such as photos, video, and texts
It is imperative to understand how the geosocial system works. When people post their interests and mindsets on social media, these geotagged posts are filtered to generate behavioral segments at specific locations. These Geosocial segments can be derived from summing interaction between unique pairs of senders and receivers, regarding or disregarding who initiates the interaction. This derivation can be used to examine how humans behaveas a function of their connections, for example how factions can form in a group. They are then used to fit the right business to the right community for example forecast brand/ product performance in a certain area. Certain segments tend to be higher at different times of day, days of the week, or months out of the year. Hence, it of utmost importance to understand the relationship of a segment with time, which can provide further insight into the behaviors and personalities being measured. The application of geosocial data is about finding out the best match between business needs and social activity in communities.
In developing countries like India, the lack of real-time data on emergent disasters often restrains the decision maker’s ability to counter its impacts, thus the idea of leveraging mobile apps ‘geosocial apps’ for crowdsourcing disaster-related information has now gained high prominence.
Tourist agencies or travel recommender systems mine trips from location-based social networks to understand how tourists travel the world thus helping destination marketers to learn more about the context of their prospective guests and make attractive offers for more visitors. To capture the underlying mobility patterns, these trips are quantified using a number of metrics to provide insights into individual travel by analyzing the number of accommodation bookings in a city, tracking ticket sales of flights or trains.
However, the probable risks related to Geo-location services should not be underestimated. Geolocation data obtained from global positioning satellite (GPS) devices or smartphones with GPS capabilities can not only provide insight into victims’ whereabouts but their habits and lifestyle, helping an attacker get to know the victims, their interests, where they go, and what they do. Armed with this type of information, an attacker can more easily script the victim’s recent activities by making him fall prey to spear-phishing attacks, crawling and many others. Awareness regarding disabling location services when not needed is important.
Future scope
We are just embarking on the new entrepreneurial phase of the digital transition. This wave of new-age entrepreneurs is using geosocial intelligence and big data analytics for redefining the contours of global businesses. There are several unknowns that would further spur the adoption of these systems: changing policy dynamics, new IT laws, new ways to monetize the social economy. There is still an urgent need for effective policies to be drafted and implemented to combat skill development in data analytics. The enterprises can complement by focusing on creating multi-sector alliances that promote data sharing on thematic societal issues.
Even people living at the base of the economic pyramid have the potential to receive the benefit of this Geospatial-social technology hence empowering communities. While we believe that Security awareness is a basic civil right, the rural people have the potential to meet us halfway if we can give them access to the right information tools and the ability to connect to the Geosocial network. Such approaches are explicitly designed to bridge the gap between Non-Digital India and Digital India.
Check out case study for Covid Sentiment Analysis Using Geo Social Data here -
Writer –
Beena Nathani
Founder of DGIS (Dhruv Geospatial Envirotech )
Life member of Indian Society of Geomatics ( lSG) and Indian Women Scientists Association (IWSA).
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