Nick LaLone

Nick LaLone

My work focuses on how people and objects get to know each other. I work in crisis response, human-computer interaction, and simulation, all through the lens of play.

Harnessing Twitter and Crowdsourcing to Augment Aurora Forecasting

Published in Conference Proceedings, 2015

Recommended citation: LaLone, Nicolas, et al. "Harnessing Twitter and crowdsourcing to augment aurora forecasting." Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference Companion on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. ACM, 2015. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2702671

The aurora borealis and aurora australis are beautiful space weather driven events whose sighting is typically based on luck given that forecasting is not spatially or temporally precise. To help increase the accuracy and timeliness of auroral forecasting, we have designed a multi-faceted system called Aurorasaurus. This system allows crisis management specialists to test reactions to rare event notifications, space weather scientists to get direct sighting information of auroras (complete with pictures), and science education researchers to evaluate the impact of educational materials about the aurora and the physics surrounding this unique phenomenon. Through manual tweet verification and directly reported aurora borealis or aurora australis sightings, everyday users help make space weather and aurora forecasting more accurate.

Download paper here

Recommended citation: LaLone, Nicolas, et al. “Harnessing Twitter and crowdsourcing to augment aurora forecasting.” Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference Companion on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. ACM, 2015.