The volume of social content is massive—over one billion monthly active users, 500 million daily tweets and 70 million photos and videos shared every day based on data from Twitter, Instagram and YouTube alone. Social media platforms allow users from around the globe to share information about their everyday lives, whether it be an upcoming trip to Hawaii or a job promotion. However, social media can also be leveraged in a much more powerful way as a critical tool for preventing and responding to threats.
Phil Harris, CEO and co-founder of Geofeedia, told Homeland Security Today airport security teams are increasingly turning to location-based social data as a source of actionable intelligence information. With the enormous amount of social data available, having a technology that can organize the data and filter out the noise is crucial for airport and aviation security.
Founded in July 2011, Geofeedia allows companies to do social media monitoring by location. The company’s customers include a number of airport security teams and investigators looking to improve situational awareness by leveraging social media.
“Social media is over ten years old but this concept of location is new and the ability for airport security and other public safety teams to garner value from it is very new,” Harris said.
“Traditional social media platforms answer certain questions like who, what and when, but what is new now is, where. And for security professionals where is very important.”
Harris identified a number of key benefits for using location-based social media monitoring, including improved situational awareness by allowing airport security officials to monitor threats in real-time.
Read complete report here in the latest issue of Homeland Security Today.
