November 3, 2014

First official PetaJakarta tweet sent from SMART Infrastructure Facility

PetaJakarta, a pilot study utilising a geosocial intelligence framework to map instances of flooding in the capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta, was officially launched in Wollongong on 29 October.

Representatives of BPDP DKI Jakarta and SMART researchers Dr Tomas Holderness and Dr Etienne Turpin.

For more than a year, the project’s chief investigators, Dr Etienne Turpin and Dr Tomas Holderness, have been working to bring this project to fruition. The many units of energy exhausted by the PetaJakarta research team - developing the open source software CogniCity that powers the project, time in the field gathering information and performing tests, building relationships with locals, government agencies and Twitter - were applauded by the dozens of people attending the Australian launch.

Following a few words of encouragement by distinguished guests SMART CEO Garry Bowditch, Wollongong Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery OAM, Member for Keira Mr Ryan Park MP, Dr Turpin and Dr Holderness invited UOW’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Judy Raper to hit send on the first official @PetaJkt tweet.

— Peta Jakarta (@petajkt) October 29, 2014

At the launch, Dr Holderness, who specialises in geomatics, reflected on how the SMART Infrastructure Facility enables interdisciplinary research, which has been fundamental to the success of this project.

“Never in my mind, while staying up late finishing my PhD, did I envisage that in a few years I’d be sat in an office in Wollongong with a philosopher trying to tackle some of these challenging research questions about infrastructure, and, more importantly, about how people interact with that infrastructure and how we can improve it and the lives of people in Jakarta,” he said.

Philosopher Dr Turpin spoke about the benefits of being able to work directly with BPDP DKI Jakarta saying that the cooperation meant the PetaJakarta research team could be sure the tools and systems they are developing meet the needs of the agency who are on the font line of developing resilience and adapting because of climate change.

The PetaJakarta project harvests valuable information from geotagged tweets sent by Jakarta’s social media savvy citizens. The resulting data is then used to map flooding across the city. In April 2014, in recognition of the project’s foresight, Twitter awarded the PetaJakarta project access to Twitter’s public and historical data with a Twitter #DataGrant.

Jim Moffitt, a Developer Advocate at Twitter, joined the Australian launch from Colorado, US, via Skype, and said he and his colleagues at Twitter are excited about the project and its potential.

“When I first heard about the project through the Twitter #DataGrant program I was excited because this project’s use of the Twitter network as a two-way public safety broadcast network truly represents, in my mind, the highest potential for a social network,” he said. “This project also represents a great example of business, universities and public agencies all working together.”

From November 2014, the PetaJakarta team will work with BPDP DKI Jakarta to map floods cross the city during monsoon season. A project launch will be held in Jakarta on 2 December.

PetaJakarta is a key UOW Global Challenges project helping to address the challenge of Sustaining Coastal and Marine Zones and is further supported by Australian National Data Service. The project has also benefited from a Twitter #DataGrant, which was awarded to the lead researchers in April 2014.

Media contact: Jacqueline Wales, UOW Media and PR Officer, +61 2 4221 4582, +61 427 225 657 or jwales@uow.edu.au

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