Feb 18, 2021 | Austria, Climate, Climate Change, Communication, Education, Health
By Thomas Schinko, Acting Research Group Leader, Equity and Justice Research Group
Thomas Schinko introduces an innovative and transdisciplinary peer-to-peer training program.
What do we want – climate justice! When do we want it – now! The recent emergence of youth-led, social climate movements like #FridaysForFuture (#FFF), the Sunrise Movement, and Extinction Rebellion has reemphasized that at the heart of many – if not all – grand global challenges of our time, lie aspects of social and environmental justice. With a novel peer-to-peer education format, embedded in a transdisciplinary research project, the Austrian climate change research community responds to the call that unites these otherwise diverse movements: “Listen to the Science!”
The climate crisis raises several issues of justice, which include (but are not limited to) the following dimensions: First, intragenerational climate justice addresses the fair distribution of costs and benefits associated with climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as the rectification of damage caused by residual climate change impacts between present generations. Second, intergenerational justice focuses on the distribution of benefits and costs from climate change between present and future generations. Third, procedural justice asks for fair processes, namely that institutions allow all interested and affected actors to advance their claims while co-creating a low-carbon future. Movements like #FFF maneuver at the intersection of those three forms of climate justice when calling on policy- and decision makers to urgently take climate action, since “there is no planet B”.
Along with the emergence of these youth-led social climate movements came an increasing demand for the expertise of scientists working in the fields of climate change and sustainability research. To support #FFF’s claims with the best available scientific evidence, a group of German, Austrian, and Swiss scientists came together in early 2019 as Scientists for Future. Since then, requests from students, teachers, and policy and decision makers for researchers to engage with the younger generation have soared, also in Austria. Individual researchers like me have not been able to respond to all these requests at the extent we would have liked to.
In this situation of high demand for scientific support, the Climate Change Center Austria (CCCA) and The Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) have put their heads together and established a transdisciplinary research project – makingAchange. By engaging early on with our potential end users – Austrian school students – a truly transdisciplinary team of researchers as well as practitioners in youth participation and education (the association “Welt der Kinder”) has co-developed this novel peer-to-peer curriculum. The training program, which runs over a full school year, sets out to provide the students not only with solid scientific facts but also with soft skills that are needed for passing on this knowledge and for building up their own climate initiatives in their schools and municipalities. One of the key aims is to provide solid scientific support while not overburdening the younger generation who often tend to put too high demands on themselves.
Establishing scientific facts about climate change and offering scientific projections of future change on its own does not drive political and societal change. Truly inter- and transdisciplinary research is needed to support the complex transformation towards a sustainable society and the integration of novel, bottom-up civil society initiatives with top-down policy- and decision making. Engaging multiple actors with their alternative problem frames and aspirations for sustainable futures is now recognized as essential for effective governance processes, and ultimately for robust policy implementation.
Also, in the context of makingAchange it is not sufficient to communicate science to students in order to generate real-world impact in terms of leading our societies onto low-carbon development pathways. What is additionally needed, is to provide them with complementary personal and social skills for enhancing their perceived self-efficacy and response efficacy, which is crucial for eventually translating their knowledge into real climate action in their respective spheres of influence.
Recent insights from a medical health assessment of the COVID-19 related lockdowns on childhood mental health in the UK have shown that we are engaging in an already highly fragile environment. In addition, a recent representative study for Austria has shown that the pandemic is becoming a psychological burden. The study authors are particularly concerned about young people; more than half of young Austrians are already showing symptoms of depression. Hence, we must engage very carefully with the makingAchange students when discussing the drivers and potential impacts of the climate crises. Particularly since some of them are quite well informed about research, which has shown (by using a statistical approach) that our chances of achieving the 1.5 to 2°C target stipulated in the Paris Agreement are now probably lower than 5%. Another example of such alarming research insights comes in the form of a 2020 report by the World Meteorological Organization, which warns that there is a 24% chance that global average temperatures could already surpass the 1.5°C mark in the next five years.
Zoom group picture taken at the end of the second online makingAchange workshop for Austrian school students. Copyright: makingAchange
The first makingAchange activities and workshops have now taken place – due to the COVID-19 regulations in an online format, which added further complexity to this transdisciplinary research project. Nevertheless, we were able to discuss some of the hot topics that the young people were curious about, such as the natural science foundations of the climate crisis, climate justice, or a healthy and sustainable diet. At the same time, we provided our students with skills to further transmit this knowledge and to take climate action in their everyday live – such as a climate friendly Christmas celebration in 2020. The school student’s lively engagement in these sessions as well as the overall positive (anonymous) feedback has proven that we are on the right track.
The role of science is changing fast from “advisor” to “partner” in civil society, policymaking, and decision making. By doing so, scientists can play an important, active role in implementing the desperately needed social-ecological transformation of our society without becoming policy prescriptive. With the makingAchange project, we are actively engaging in this transformational process – currently only in Austria but with high ambitions to scale-out this novel peer-to-peer format to other geographical and cultural contexts.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Sep 2, 2020 | Communication, Sustainable Development, Systems Analysis
By Rachel Potter, Communications Officer in the IIASA Communications and External Relations Department.
Several members of the IIASA Strategic Taskforce share their views on the bold new IIASA strategic agenda, how it came to be, and what it promises for the future.
What will the world look like in 2030 and beyond? We are living in extraordinary times and our rapidly transforming planet faces multiple global sustainability challenges, threats, and opportunities. How will research institutes like IIASA continue to make meaningful contributions to address these complex issues?
This is precisely what IIASA has been exploring over the past 18 months while formulating its strategic direction for the next 10 years. Through institute-wide consultations, a strategic taskforce was entrusted with coordinating the process that led to “Reducing footprints, enhancing resilience” – the institute’s ambitious new strategy for 2021-2030 that positions IIASA as the primary destination for integrated systems solutions and policy insights.
A bottom-up inclusive approach
The strategy consultation process was very different to those previously undertaken at IIASA. Acting Transitions to New Technologies Program Director and Energy Program researcher, Shonali Pachauri describes the rationale behind the process:
“While in the past strategic planning had largely been driven by the directorate and program directors, this time, mid-career scientists were to drive the process forward. It was not meant to be one researcher from each program on the taskforce, but it ended up being something like that, so we had a broad representation of disciplines from across the institute. The taskforce was responsible for developing the scientific content of the plan and we did this in an inclusive manner with input from staff through workshops, an online platform, and both informal and formal meetings.”
Reflecting our changing world
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established in 2015, are clearly reflected in the new strategy. Linda See, a researcher in the Ecosystems Services and Management Program, explains:
“We have always worked on sustainable development and transformations but this is now more of a focus compared to the previous strategy. The emphasis is on using our expertise as systems scientists to explore the interrelationships between different SDGs and how there can be synergies and trade-offs in different scenarios to achieve them.”
“Another key shift is that the new strategic plan takes a human-centered approach, placing more emphasis on how people are a core component of pathways towards sustainability and resilient societies,” adds World Population Program Deputy Program Director, Raya Muttarak.
Fellow taskforce member and Acting Water Program Director, Yoshihide Wada, agrees:
“This focus on social science, governance, and human behavior came out of our consultations with staff. IIASA researchers really want to go in this direction. People increasingly understand that with the climate and environmental goals in particular, it can’t only be technology and bioeconomy, it has to be about lifestyles as well, which means we need to strengthen our ability to analyze behavior and identify which levers to pull to encourage lifestyle changes.”
“There is also a stronger focus on biodiversity. The importance of this was borne out of the current COVID-19 crisis. Looking at the origin of the virus and how the pandemic has been aided by the loss of biodiversity – it’s evident that this is crucial,” adds Manager of Library and Knowledge Resources, Michaela Rossini.
Building on strong foundations for continued innovation
Taskforce members agree that the new strategy consolidates the unique strengths of IIASA while providing the space and flexibility for innovation.
“IIASA is unique not only because of our excellence in the fields of energy, environment, climate change, and ecosystems services but also because we have strong, empirically-based analyses and studies from social sciences, which can quantify and forecast relevant demographic, social, and economic dimensions in systems analysis,” says Muttarak.
“I think the new strategy pushes the interdisciplinarity at IIASA even further. The new program structure is very integrated. This is vital to facing today’s sustainability challenges. There are big aspirations in the strategy and it’s our responsibility to translate this into practice. As scientists, we have to be open to change and include elements that we may never have thought of. It makes things very interesting. It makes innovation happen,” Wada adds.
Pachauri explains that IIASA was created as a science-to-policy interface in 1972 and its purpose has always been to bridge divides: both between disciplines and across transnational boundaries. The new strategy really builds on this history. While the institute innovates a lot in terms of models and methods, this always happens through an applied lens of doing something that will ultimately feed into policy.
One of the institute’s key strengths is its relationships with its National Member Organizations and strong global network. These relationships are what make it possible to tackle the real-world problems society faces today. The flexibility to work across networks, countries, and different levels of government is strongly emphasized in the strategy.
A bit like family
According to Muttarak, the process of drawing up the new IIASA strategy has been a great opportunity to work with people from different programs and units. Not only has this allowed everyone involved to get to know their colleagues better, but it has also enhanced team members’ understanding of systems analysis and the importance of IIASA.
“It was challenging and rewarding, a bit like family!” comments Pachauri. “There was a lovely dynamism in the team and although we had a Chair, everyone had a chance to lead at various times in the process.”
“As the only non-scientist I found working on the taskforce invaluable – understanding more about IIASA research and getting to know scientists from across the institute has really enhanced my awareness of what they do and what their needs are going forward,” Rossini concludes.
The full IIASA Strategic Taskforce is comprised of: Luis Gomez Echeverri, Matthias Jonas, Mauricio A. Lopes, Junko Mochizuki, Raya Muttarak, Shonali Pachauri, Michaela Rossini, Linda See, Thomas Schinko, Yoshihide Wada, and Fabian Wagner.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Aug 3, 2020 | Citizen Science, Data and Methods, Sustainable Development
By Dilek Fraisl, researcher in the IIASA Ecosystems Services and Management Program and chair of the WeObserve SDGs and Citizen Science Community of Practice.
How can we address the data gaps for achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? What is the potential of citizen science to track progress on the SDGs as a new source of data? How can we harness citizen science data effectively for evidence-based policymaking and SDG achievement?
These were just some of the questions we had in mind when we started research into the contributions of citizen science to SDG monitoring at the Sustainable Solutions Development Network (SDSN) Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS). We were aware that citizen science has a role to play, but we didn’t know what the extent of that role would be. We wanted to show where exactly the real potential of citizen science lies in the global SDG indicator framework and also to understand what we can do to bring all the key players together to fully realize this potential.
This research led to our paper “Mapping Citizen Science Contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals”, which was recently published in the journal Sustainability Science.
© Litter Intelligence by Sustainable Coastlines
Our most remarkable finding was that citizen science could contribute to the achievement of all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by providing data for 33% of all SDG indicators. There are currently 247 SDG indicators that are defined in an evolving framework that includes 17 goals and 169 targets. This has huge potential.
We first investigated the metadata and work plans of all the SDG indicators and then searched for citizen science initiatives at global, national, and even local scales that could potentially contribute data to the monitoring of these indicators. This work was carried out with volunteer members of the SDGs and Citizen Science Community of Practice (SDGs CoP) that was launched a year and a half ago for the WeObserve project.
We also looked at the overlap between contributions from citizen science and earth observations in our study. Based on the mapping exercise GEO undertook of the 29 indicators identified, citizen science could support 24. This shows great potential for citizen science and earth observation approaches to complement each other. One example would be Picture Pile ̶ a flexible tool that ingests imagery from satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or geotagged photos for rapid assessment and classification.
In Picture Pile, the volunteers are provided with a pair of images taken at different times and asked whether they see any tree loss (to identify deforestation), damaged buildings after a disaster (for post disaster damage assessment), marine plastics (to understand the extent of plastics problem), or to assess levels of poverty (to map poverty), among others. Picture Pile combines earth observation and citizen science approaches that could be used for monitoring some SDG indicators. To name but a few: 1.5.2 Direct economic loss attributed to disasters in relation to global gross domestic product (GDP); 11.1.1 Proportion of urban population living in slums, informal settlements, or inadequate housing; 14.1.1b Floating plastic debris density; and 15.1.1 Forest area as a proportion of total land area. Exploring and realizing this potential of citizen science and earth observation is one of our priorities at the GEO Community Activity on Citizen Science (GEO-CITSCI).
Thanks to this study, we now know which initiatives could be leveraged to contribute to SDG monitoring, and we have the groundwork to show to project teams, National Statistical Offices, and custodian agencies to start discussions around how to realize it fully.
The SDG indicators where citizen science projects are “already contributing” (in green), “could contribute” (in yellow) or where there is “no alignment” (in grey). The overall citizen science contributions to each SDG are summarized as pie charts. Black borders around indicators show the overlap between citizen science and EO, as identified by GEO (2017).
The Picture Pile application (both online and for mobile devices) is designed to be a generic and flexible tool for ingesting imagery that can then be rapidly classified by volunteers. Picture Pile, IIASA.
Another important finding of our work was that the greatest potential for citizen science ̶ when existing and potential future contributions are combined ̶ could occur respectively in SDG 15 (Life on Land), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), and SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation). This shows that citizen science has the greatest potential for input to the environmental SDG indicators.
Of the 93 environmental indicators in the SDG indicator framework identified by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), citizen science could provide inputs for 37 (around 40%) indicators. As 68% of these environmental SDG indicators lack data, again identified by UNEP, also given that we only have 10 years left to achieve the SDGs, we need to start thinking about how to leverage this potential citizen science offer for SDG monitoring.
In order to effectively monitor and ultimately achieve the SDGs, traditional ways of data collection such as censuses or household surveys will not be sufficient. Additionally, they will also be too expensive to cover the wide range of the SDGs with its 169 targets and 247 indicators on a regular basis. We urgently need to act on the results of this study, and to utilize the potential of new ways of data collection such as citizen science, if we are to achieve the SDGs by 2030, but how? Where do we start?
We need to keep working on demonstrating the value of citizen science in the global data ecosystem through initiatives such as the WeObserve the SDGs CoP, building partnerships around citizen science data involving all the stakeholders, and encouraging investment to leverage the use of citizen science data for the SDGs. We should develop case studies and success stories about the use of citizen science by NSOs and design the citizen science initiatives with NSOs and other government agencies to ensure that their data quality requirements are met.
I believe it is important to mention that citizen science is not only a source of data that could fill gaps, but it is also a great way to mobilize action and get everyone on board to play their part in addressing the world’s greatest challenges by engaging the public in scientific research. Working together, we can harness the potential of citizen science to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This post first appeared on the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) blog.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
May 6, 2020 | COVID19, Risk and resilience
By Finn Laurien, researcher in the IIASA Risk and Resilience Program and Reinhard Mechler, Acting Program Director IIASA Risk and Resilience Program
The global COVID-19 crisis is challenging the social fabric of countries and communities across the globe. Interventions such as lockdowns, social distancing measures, and economic stimulus packages have been introduced to reinforce societal resilience. The resilience of national health systems is particularly in the spotlight – primarily keeping occupancy numbers of intensive care beds under a critical threshold, as well as improving access to basic health services for people infected with the virus, and ensuring that infections do not spread further.
© piyushpriyanka|Unsplash
At the same time, many COVID-19 affected regions and communities are confronted with additional multiple threats, including disaster and climate risks like flooding. For example, South Asia will be facing the monsoon season soon, and cyclones have already ravaged islands in the Pacific. So the question becomes, how do we support communities in preparing for and building resilience to such compound events like disasters AND infectious diseases?
Resilience has emerged as a system-based concept that explains how systems respond to shocks. IIASA has a long history of conceptualizing and assessing resilience. In partnership with members of the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance (ZFRA), IIASA has co-developed an innovative approach called the Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC) that measures the various facets of what builds resilience against flood risk at community levels. The FRMC consists of a holistic framework and an indicator-based assessment tool. It measures resilience before and after disasters at the community level – where people feel the impacts acutely and work together to take action. We define resilience widely in terms of a systems-thinking and development-centric conceptualization: “The ability of a system, community or society to pursue its social, ecological and economic development and growth objectives, while managing its disaster risk over time in a mutually reinforcing way.”
The FRMC measures resilience across a number of indicators that are collected through humanitarian and development NGO Alliance partners in communities in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. It provides vital information for decision makers by prioritizing the resilience-building measures most needed by a community. At community and higher decision-making levels, measuring resilience also provides a basis for improving the design of public or privately funded programs to strengthen disaster resilience.
One of the seven themes that has been defined as a key aspect from the FRMC systems thinking approach is “Life and Health”, which is also relevant when looking at COVID-19 and includes access to and availability of healthcare facilities; strategies to maintain or quickly resume interrupted healthcare services; safety knowledge and Water and Sanitation (WASH).
Insights into dealing with COVID-19
In a recent research paper we analyzed FRMC data collected in 118 communities across nine countries in Asia, Latin America, and the US and explored which capacities or capitals contribute most to community disaster resilience. We identified multiple interactions, for instance, how action on bolstering health also contributes to social capital. There are two takeaways from this research that are relevant to other compound events, including the COVID-19 pandemic.
First, fair and functioning health systems play a key role in building resilience against compound risk – against flood as well as against other stresses that lead to negative health outcomes. Strategies that enable interrupted health systems to quickly resume are critical, and need to be in place before a disaster strikes.
In the communities where ZFRA conducted FRMC studies, disaster resilience and the health component scored relatively low at the beginning. However, when interventions such as household health-related trainings in Mexico, or hospital capacity assessments in Nepal, were implemented (with our measurement tool running), the health component increased for almost all countries (except for the USA) (see blue line in Figure 1). As the health component is a key part of resilience it contributed to disaster resilience overall, including ‘compound risks’ (green line in Figure 1). This means that (further) accelerating investments into health services (e.g., as part of COVID-19 response and recovery packages) leads to additional benefits for other shocks.
Figure 1: Between 2013 and 2018, increased community resilience can be attributed to resilience against compound risk (green line) and includes a health component (blue line). The difference between the two lines indicates the attribution of the increase in specific resilience to flood hazard.
A second takeaway is that through a so-called ‘multifunctionality’ effect, co-benefits are induced. This provides evidence of a virtuous cycle effect where higher resilient capacity in one area fosters communities’ resilience capacity for other functions. As community functions and outcomes are connected in a community system, improved access to health services can generate co-benefits (e.g., healthier individuals attain higher levels of livelihoods and build more social networks, which again build resilience during a shock). This has been well understood in the theoretical literature, and our analysis for the first time provides needed evidence at community level for flood and disaster risk.
If these co-benefit effects are taken into account, we find evidence that Food and Water strategies (see Figure 2) can be most efficient in building resilience to both adverse flood and health events. In fact, our sources of resilience indicate that the capacity in the Food and Water dimensions also foster health resilience.
Risk awareness is hazard-specific but can be integrated into packages that tackle risk generally. For example, health relevant interventions for infectious diseases (e.g., appropriate hygiene measures) can be integrated into flood evacuation plans. A best-practice example from our work are the campaigns and fairs carried out in Mexico and Nepal targeting educational awareness on health-related impacts during flood events.
Going forward with resilience thinking
Figure 2: Attribution of flood resilience to health component. Some dimensions show a similar pattern in building both flood and health resilience. Other flood-related efforts are too specific and cannot be attributed to resilience against COVID-19.
There is growing recognition by researchers, policymakers, and practitioners of the need to address compound risks in a development-centric way, tackling multiple threats with a focus on human wellbeing, rather than on hazards only. The COVID-19 crisis calls for donors, national governments, civil society, and communities to invest in comprehensive approaches that create multiple benefits.
Our system-based resilience research shows that using a systems resilience assessment at community level can identify direct short- and longer-term benefits. Investing in capacities builds resilience against compound risk such as flooding and infectious diseases. Investment into programs that ramp up health systems and WASH creates multiple benefits in terms of tackling COVID-19 and disaster and climate risks simultaneously. In the context of the upcoming monsoon and hurricane season, this means COVID-19 response and recovery packages need to invest in measures that also reduce social and economic impacts from COVID-19 under flood hazards. Additionally, diversifying household income strategies is high among the measures that unlock multiple co-benefits against compound risks. As action on COVID-19 (hopefully) moves from crisis response to recovery, such measures should be part and parcel of a post-COVID-19 recovery process, reducing the risk of vulnerable groups falling into poverty traps.
References:
Laurien, F., Hochrainer-Stigler, S., Keating, A., Campbell, K., Mechler, R., & Czajkowski, J. (2020). A typology of community flood resilience. Regional Environmental Change, 20(1), 24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01593-x
Keating, A., Campbell, K., Mechler, R., Magnuszewski, P., Mochizuki, J., Liu, W., Szoenyi, M., McQuistan, C. (2016). Disaster resilience: What it is and how it can engender a meaningful change in development policy. Development Policy Review 35 (1): 65-91
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Apr 22, 2020 | COVID19, Data and Methods
By Santosh Karanam, .NET Full Stack Developer in the IIASA Ecosystems Services and Management Program
Santosh Karanam describes his efforts to visualize people’s reactions to the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in real time as they are expressed on Twitter.
© Ezthaiphoto | Dreamstime.com
Who would have imagined at the beginning of 2020, when the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs was still projecting global economic growth at 2.5%, that within a few months the same department would have to release a new briefing stating that the global economy is now projected to shrink by 0.9% in 2020 due to a pandemic. This is mainly due to sudden restrictions and disruptions in global supply chains and international trade. COVID-19 is already having a lasting impact on the global economy; nearly 100 countries have closed their national borders during the past month, and the movement of people and tourism flows have come to a screeching halt.
In some countries, the COVID-19 pandemic has peaked in terms of the number of new infections, however, many countries are yet to reach the peak. Countries that seem to have crossed the peak are looking for ways to lift restrictions gradually, while keeping an eye on infection rates to avoid a second wave of infections. These actions by governments are being watched closely by people around the globe and trigger various kinds of emotional reactions.
Visualizing Twitter reactions in real time
I was curious about the possibility of visualizing these reactions, or sentiments, on a real-time basis as we crawl through these unprecedented times of the COVID-19 pandemic. It led me to create a real-time dashboard to visualize sentiments about the lifting of pandemic restrictions expressed or evident on the social media platform Twitter.
Twitter has application program interfaces (APIs) that enable developers to pull data from Twitter in a machine-readable format. This data is the same as the data shown when you open your Twitter account in either a browser or a mobile application and search for specific words. I decided to utilize this data using search key words like “lifting lockdown” and ”lifting restriction” and assign sentiment scores to tweets relating to these keywords using sentiment140.
Sentiment140 is a program created by computer science graduates from Stanford University that allows you to discover the sentiment of a brand, product, or topic on Twitter. It automatically classifies the sentiment of Twitter messages by using classifiers built using machine learning algorithms, and provides transparency for the classification results of individual tweets. Twitter uses complex algorithms to get the results for key words. These tweets are pulled continuously in real time and sent to sentiment140 APIs where they are assigned sentiment scores: 0 for negative, 2 for neutral and 4 for positive.
Below is an example of this scoring:
|
Tweet
|
Scores |
Sentiment |
| Why are people so eager to end lockdown and lift restrictions… for a second wave and then moan again… the mind boggles!! |
0 |
Negative |
| Iran begins lifting restrictions after brief coronavirus lockdown |
2 |
Neutral |
| Germany has now begun to lift restrictions to visit one another and open businesses soon because we actually listened and stayed at home. Germany has now been marked the 2nd Safest country during the pandemic |
4 |
Positive |
From April 12th 2020 to April 21st 2020, a total of 208,220 tweets were scored and analyzed, this total number of tweets is growing daily as new tweets come in. The tweets are analyzed (sentiment scored) in real time and aggregated hourly. The above examples are taken from the analyzed tweets. For simplicity and to have a wholistic view of all relevant tweets, replies to tweets and re-tweets are all scored as people may react days after the initial tweet. For this experiment, only English language tweets are considered.
The scores assigned are aggregated every hour, stored in cloud storage, and are shown in the website dashboard. The dashboard shows the status of the current day’s scores and is updated every hour, it also shows the previous four days’ sentiment score results.
Visit the website and see the dashboard.
Trends so far:
I can see a trend where most of the tweets fall under neutral scores as we are in the early days of restrictions being lifted. Many people are concerned about whether the measures will work. As the days progress I expect the neutral scores to reduce and convert into either positive or negative scores. This all depends on how infection rates either rise or fall in the days to come. Ideally, if everything turns out as planned, the positive sentiments will grow, and negative and neutral sentiments will shrink.
The scored tweets are not country specific but are captured globally, the reason being that less than 1-2% of Tweets are geo-tagged and for a real time experiment, I thought it would be too little data per hour. Since very few countries have crossed the peak of the curve, the current results show that the neutral and negative scores form the major share as we progress and hopefully, if infection rates do not increase drastically with the ease of lockdown restrictions, we might see positive sentiment scores taking the major share.
Additional info:
This is a sample experiment that I am running in the Microsoft Azure cloud using Azure Event Hubs and Azure Stream Analytics for real-time processing of Twitter data. I am storing the aggregated score results in Azure Blob Stores – you can read more about the setup here. The aggregated results are shown using a simple react java script application, which is again hosted in Microsoft Azure cloud. Do contact me for further details.
References
- https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2020/04/covid-19-likely-to-shrink-global-gdp-by-almost-one-per-cent-in-2020/
- https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/04/1061782
- http://help.sentiment140.com/home
- https://developer.twitter.com/en
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/stream-analytics/stream-analytics-twitter-sentiment-analysis-trends
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
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