Needless to say, AI’s role in keeping cities safe and secure has become more eminent than ever. With more and more unstructured data generated in metropolises around the world, AI- or deep learning-based analytics are needed to make sense of this data and provide insights to residents and municipal administrators. In particular, in the context of analyzing contents generated from social media, AI can also play a key role in keeping citizens more informed and aware of their surroundings.
That was the point raised by SAM, which develops AI-based analytics that turns social media postings into real-time information and alerts, which then help end users prepare or respond to incidents or disasters in their areas.
“SAM is an artificial intelligence engine that scans social media to detect and monitor crisis situations,” said James A. Neufeld, CEO and Founder of U.K.-based SAM. “Using social media as a national and global sensory network of micro updates, our system is able to alert to crises hours before major media and provide unparalleled situational awareness through the lens of on the ground sources.”
The solution leverages the overwhelming amount of data generated by social media each day. According to the 5th annual Data Never Sleeps infographic by Domo, the number of Tweets users send per minute totals 456,000. Instagram users, meanwhile, post 46,740 photos each minute. How to make sense of this data and help citizens become more situationally aware, then, becomes key.
“Relying on media coverage is increasingly irrelevant for detecting disruption events as the mainstream media continue to focus on political and cultural information. Meanwhile Twitter has firmly established itself as a raw and unfiltered feed of events, putting users in the driver seat to see what is going on in the world. Yet, tools like Twitter.com or even TweetDeck require a lot of user knowledge and input to properly extract value – hashtags and geo-fencing are no longer enough to spot disruptions before they’re a trending event,” Neufeld said. “We believe that social media data can be used as an unparalleled sensory network of global events. The demand for our own product comes from business demands for faster, more reliable information without needing a specialized team to extract the best elements of Twitter.”
Situational awareness during crisis
That’s where SAM’s solution comes in, which sources social chatter, media reports, photos, videos and location data to give the user situational awareness in times of crisis. “SAM has built an autonomous AI engine that not only detects events, but works to verify and corroborate events just like an analyst or journalist would. In real-time, it’s able to make judgements based on the quality of sources and seek out additional data to ensure accurate information is being presented to our users. The result is a purified and trust-worthy stream of Twitter data, 100 percent curated by a machine, around any news that might impact business operations,” Neufeld said.
In his words, a range of vertical markets can benefit from SAM’s solution. “Today our users span from newsrooms, risk analysts, airlines, trading desks and corporate security teams. If you need to understand disruption or risks the moment they happen, it’s likely SAM can help,” Neufeld said.
According to Neufeld, the use of AI is ultimately what sets SAM apart and makes it stand out. “Our solution is entirely AI driven – from how we detect events to how we verify and triangulate data for our users. Many of our peers and traditional sources rely on domain or subject experts to seek out relevant information. We believe that AI represents a novel way to quantify global events at a scale and speed unobtainable by humans,” he said.
