This study makes empirical sense of that qualitative data to provide useful, reliable information to citizens. Social media posts are usually text-based, the researchers note, and contain natural language from real people. student in spatial information science and engineering and Silvia Nittel, associate professor in spatial informatics focused on whether information from citizens affected by a natural disaster is enough to generate a map of the event as it unfolds. The research, led by Iranga Subasinghe, a Ph.D. Data from many people can contribute to an integrated spatiotemporal map to provide a comprehensive look at the event. People located close to events such as flooding, wildfires and mudslides can provide a stream of current data through posts reflecting their responses to the event. Social media posts during a natural disaster can provide a data stream to inform mapping of the event in real time, according to a new University of Maine study from the School of Computing and Information Science. Katherine Burgess covers government and religion.SeptemComputing and Information Science, Research Ultimately, council members decided to pass the new map on “same night minutes,” meaning it cannot be brought back up in the next council meeting.Ĭouncilman Chase Carlisle stressed that without a change, the current map has disproportionate representation between districts and keeping it “could be considered a dereliction of duty.” Wade, however, said redistricting can only be evaluated on race-neutral principles and any other analysis would have to be taken to federal court for approval. More City of Memphis news: Memphis property tax stays flat public safety employees to see 14% base salary increase … the bottom line is that this is about preserving the status quo,” he said.

These are scare tactics that rip us apart. “Black folks will vote for their interests whether it’s Black or white. Harris called the concerns about race “a scare tactic” and said that he only looked at data and fair representation. “We’re fixing a mistake on a map that did not intend to have any kind of community or full council engagement.” “If the council had not voted and nominated people to go through this process, we probably wouldn’t have found this out until this was a detrimental time and we probably would have had a legal issue Oct.

It was Darrick Harris, a former member of that committee who assisted the Shelby County Commission in their most recent redistricting process, who found the discrepancy in the current map.

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