1.How do you think GIS has changed in the past ten years?
We can make maps faster and with more high quality than ten years ago.
2.Why did you decide to do the project?
Because I wanted to explore whether social media data can be used for planning and decision making in smart cities.
3.How difficult was it to get the project to the stage that it is now?
Very difficult. There are very few women in engineering so for us (women) we have to work harder. It was also difficult to obtain the Twitter data, we were fortunate to have a prime Twitter account to be able to retrieve geolocated tweets.
4.What gave you the idea to do the project?
I was curious if social media could be used as a new source of information for GIS.
5.Why do you think your project is important?
Because social media can help us to better design our cities and provide timely information during natural disasters which can potentially save a lot of lives.
6.Where do you see GIS combined with social media in the next 5 years?
I think that we will be able to monitor human behaviour in real time, allowing decision / policy makers to take actionable actions based on real time data.
7.What is your favorite part of the project?
Teaching students how to use new technology and innovative methods for analyzing data and get information that can help us to build the smart cities of the future.
8.What are some of the cool things you got to do because of the project?
I was able to present the results of the project in conferences and workshops all around the world.
9.What are some of the surprising things you found due to the project?
I never expected that the human feeling such as positive and negative feelings can have such a strong impact on the collective mobility of people in such a way that clusters are formed where happy people move around the same places meanwhile unhappy people move around other different places.
10.If you could change one thing about your project what would it be?
I would have liked to have analyzed the data from Canada rather than Senegal which is in Africa.
Interview conducted on February, 5 2017 by Nicole Beuk
Interview with Dr. Monica Wachowicz
Dr. Wachowicz is a Professor at UNB. She was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands and studied at the University of Edinburgh. Her research is focused on using GIS to analyze Twitter data for making urban planning more efficient. After analyzing this data she can detect the location of social events, and also help rescue teams during natural disasters.
