Researchers: Crawl the Web to ID eco-disasters early

The Internet’s good for more than surfing, blogging and Twittering: European researchers say that trolling the ‘Net could help provide an early warning system for potential ecological disasters around the globe.

“Information and communications technology is revolutionizing the generation of and access to information,” said Victor Galaz, a researcher with the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. “Systematic ‘data mining’ of such information through the Internet can provide important early warnings about pending losses of ecosystem services.”

During 1997 and 1998, for example, the Internet saw a rise in online “chatter” about unusually warm seas and the resulting — and unprecedented — levels of mass coral bleaching, which can lead to reef death.

Galaz and his fellow researchers envision a system of Web crawlers that could automatically browse the Internet in a methodical manner to mine similarly informal reports of ecological problems posted on email lists, blogs, news articles and elsewhere.

Google has done something similar via an online feature — Google Flu Trends — for track seasonal flu outbreaks state by state in the US.