Abstract
The paper analyzes the use of social media data in geographical information systems to map the areas most affected by mortar shells in the capital of Syria, Damascus, by using geocoded and parsed social media data in geographical information systems. This paper describes a created algorithm to collecting and store data from social media sites. For the data store both a NoSQL database to save JSON format document and an RDBMS is used to save other spatial data types. A python script was written to collect the data in social media based on certain keywords related to the search. A geocoding algorithm to locate social media posts that normalize, standardize and tokenize the text was developed. The result of the developed diagram provided a year by year from 2013 to 2018 maps for mortar shell falling locations in Damascus. These layers give an overview for the changing of the numbers of mortar shells falls or in hot spot analysis for the city. Finally, social media data can prove to be useful when creating maps for dynamic social phenomena, for example, mortar shells’ location falling in Damascus, Syria. Moreover, social media data provide easy, massive, and timestamped data which makes these phenomena easier to study.
Highlights
From the beginning of the Syrian war, the civilian people were struck by mortar shelling, bombing and artillery bombardment
Some of the posts were found out the borders of Damascus, this can be attributed to the fact that both level 1 geocoding data which is neighborhood names, and other place names such as schools, streets, and mosques, are repeated in other cities, an additional restriction that one of the words should be (Damascus “”دمشق, Sham “”شام, capital “ )”عاصمةin the posts and tweets to ensure that the geocoding results are within the city
Feeding these data to the geocoding algorithm returns the words used in the google maps application programming interface (ApI) and by checking manually the location of these words
Summary
From the beginning of the Syrian war, the civilian people were struck by mortar shelling, bombing and artillery bombardment. There are multiple new articles since 2011 about the shelling neighborhoods of Damascus and the causalities of the shelling. These shelling became a characterization of the Syrian civil war, to the point where improvised artillery canons have emerged, which were modified to create maximum distraction[2]. In addition to the mortar and artillery shelling, the capital was struck by multiple rockets. With the rise of jihadists and radical groups in Syria after the civil war, a series of suicide attackers and car bombs exploded in the capital. Social media users whether news anchors or usual users often wrote about any of these effects either to question about it or to inform others
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