The SocialGlass system
SocialGlass is a web-based system that enables and facilitates the integration of heterogeneous and dynamic geo-social data. The system provides a user-friendly and grafical user interface to methods of data visualisation and exploratory analysis, at various spatial and temporal scales.
The SocialGlass system combines data from several geo-enabled social media (e.g. Twitter, Instagram, and even Sina Weibo) and LBSNs (e.g. Foursquare), publicly available urban data from governmental portals, and various sensor feeds. It further provides mechanisms for the incorporation of custom data sources.
System architecture
The system relies upon a modular architecture. The basic idea is that different tasks are assigned to different software modules. In turn, the functionality performed by each modules determines its connection patterns; that is, the other modules that it directly communicates with. The inter-module communication is achieved by means of message queues. This means that each module receives information from related ones (e.g. modules that perform certain tasks pertinent to a particular process) in the form of messages. Then, after processing the received message, it may also send messages to other modules that expect this information to complete a certain procedure. In this way, the system can be quite easily extended with new modules, without posing significant challenges to the already existing structure and system functionality.
The various modules that comprise the system are organised into four main components, namely:
- Data ingestion and analysis
- Semantic enrichment and integration
- Exploration and visualisation
- Real-time monitoring
To get a better understanding of the system architecture, you may have a look here and here.
Source: Social Glass - About
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