City Monitors Flooding Using Twitter-based Technology
Reported by Folmer | Translated by Arief Rahman
Jakarta Provincial Government optimizes the use of technology to monitor flooding through social media. By cooperating with Twitter and Wollongong University, Australia, that has an infrastructure facility called SMART (Stormwater Management and Road Tunnel), Jakarta Disaster Management Board (BPBD) launched www.petajakarta.org site to monitor and map flooding in Jakarta using an open-source technology named the geosocial intelligence engineering.
Through cooperation with BPBD and Twitter, we can empower citizens to report about flooding that happens around them in real-time
This open-source technology has a work system that changes geo-tag tweets become data that can be utilized Jakarta Provincial Government to recognize, direct, and response faster about flooding in capital city in more detail way.
“This system will be developed further until RT/RW level, so flood handling can be done quickly and effectively. We’ll pay RT/RW if they sent news to our system,” stated Jakarta Governor Basuki ‘Ahok’ Tjahaja Purnama, Tuesday (12/2).
42 Water Pumps in East Jakarta Put on StandbyEven so, Ahok admitted that further discussion still needs to be done to unite the system between Twitter and Google Waze, which previously has cooperated with city administration in handling the data of traffic congestion in the capital city.
“We’ll do planning in mid December. For example, if RT/RW wanted salary Rp 900 thousand, they should tweet three times a day, because one tweet worth Rp 10 thousand,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Director of SMART Infrastructure Facility Research from Wollongong University, Pascal Perez, said this project is not only collecting flood data passively, but it also a form of real action.
“We don’t need many data, but we need smart data. And, the smartest sensor that we have is the citizen itself. Through cooperation with BPBD and Twitter, we can empower citizens to report about flooding that happens around them in real-time,” he uttered.
According to Perez, this data grant cooperation between a university, Twitter, and a disaster mitigation board is the first time done in the world. Moreover, www.petajakarta.org is an innovative use of Twitter data to address the serious problems of flooding that impact millions of people.
“Jakarta is an ideal place to produce high quality real time signal to BPBD’s disaster management system. It shows how Twitter data could encourage positive social changes and empower the citizens,” he told.
In that launching ceremony, Ahok became the first man who used hash tag #banjir (flooding) on @petajkt. He wrote, ‘Mr. @jokowi_do2 affected by flood in Jakarta? Help tweet to @petajkt #banjir check petajakarta.org & follow @BPBDJakarta for more info’.
For information, the www.petajakarta.org project was initiated in May 2014. The use of this application is to support flood handling in the capital city that is inhabited by more than 10 million lives. Various issues such as river and coastal management as well as increase in sea level make Jakarta is highly suitable to be used as a location to test the effectiveness of technology that relies on crowd funding system on petajakarta.org site.
