Grand Data Challenge of 2014 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction (SBP14)
April 2 – April 4, 2014, UCDC Center, Washington DC, USA

http://sbp-conference.org/challenge/


About SBP

The 2014 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, and Prediction (SBP) is a multidisciplinary conference with a selective single paper track and poster session. SBP also invites a small number of high quality tutorials and nationally recognized keynote speakers. The SBP conference provides a forum for researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government agencies to exchange ideas on current challenges in social computing, behavioral-cultural modeling and prediction, and on state-of-the-art methods and best practices being adopted to tackle these challenges. Interactive events at the conference are designed to promote cross-disciplinary contact.

SBP is pleased to offer a challenge problem again in 2014, and we expect it to build on the successes of previous years’ challenge problems.


Challenge Overview

We invite participants to explore the Global Database of Events, Language and Tone (GDELT), an expansive set containing a quarter-billion geo-referenced political news events covering the whole world since 1979, describing who did what to whom when and where, and use GDELT to
- Demonstrate the applications of spatial, temporal and network methodologies and their interactions,
- Identify the latent "influencers" of social movement and media-based political competition,
- Experimentally validate and improve models for social phenomena,
- Visualize social movements of different types on all levels at a glance,
- Propose solutions to societal problems including health care and public safety using data- and model- based reasoning, and
- To suggest new creative applications using the GDELT data.

The SBP 2014 challenge is open-ended; submissions will be evaluated based on theoretical grounding, use of evidence, creativity, and impact. We invite researchers to submit entries of all types.

The challenge submissions will be judged by an interdisciplinary panel of scholars. Winners will be invited to present their submissions in a special session at the SBP conference. Travel reimbursement of up to $1,000 is available for presenters.


Important Dates

Submission deadline: January 12, 2014
Notification of winners: February 16, 2014


For more information, please contact Wen Dong at wendong@gmail.com,
Katherine Chuang at katychuang@gmail.com, Kevin Xu at kevinxu@outlook.com, or Fred Morstatter at fred.morstatter@asu.edu.