I think I like the Global Incident Map even better than the last one I posted.

It’s based on the Google Maps API, which means that you can zoom in on regions you’re interested in, and just focuses on terrorism and other forms of man-made badness. It seems to have a Western-centric bias, but I’m guessing that’s because it’s probably only processing English language news feeds. As a result, minor stuff like mailing “suspicious white power” is reported in the U.S. or U.K., but you have to actually kill a bunch of people and release a videotape to get covered in Yemen. This could be problematic if people assume that Western press coverage of incidents around the globe is complete or even and make decisions accordingly.

This is cool, but it has two problems. First, risk can only be assessed as accurately as the input data allows. In this case, depending on the scope of interest, the data might be pretty bad. Sometimes we can model assumptions fairly accurately, but only if we know when assumptions are required. Ignoring risk, even accidentally, is still accepting it.

Also, systems which provide pretty blinkenlights are usually more entertaining than informative.

Only things which change rapidly and in realtime benefit from realtime reporting interfaces. Anything else with a realtime interface is either entertainment or some new Playskool Executive Activity Center. The next time some sales rep shows you a system “dashboard,” ask yourself what the benefit of knowing the up-to-the-second state of something is from a management perspective. It may be that the guys down in the trenches who are actually driving the systems need a dashboard, but for the executive, a good map and regular position reports are a lot more useful.

Updated: MC from GlobalIncidentMap dropped by and left some more detail about the site’s back-end in a comment:

The main site is limited in its realtime usefulness, mostly because the data is manually researched and added to the map, and since we have no staff that means significant gaps each day in the data.
However the same process and system can be realtime if someone wants it to.
Think of the same mapping system, tied to the CAD systems used by a 911 call center - the map can be made to work in realtime if it has a flow of realtime data. We are working on a custom version displaying Amber Alerts - it will check the newswires every 15 minutes automatically, and do its best to place an Icon on the map in a relevant location - not realtime but close, and it wont require an analyst to sit there and babysit.
The difference between a realtime system and a near realtime system is that the realtime version requires automation of the news gathering, which leaves out any decent decision making about which articles are appropriate and which are not.

Thanks for the info!

The main site is limited in its realtime usefulness, mostly because the data is manually researched and added to the map, and since we have no staff that means significant gaps each day in the data.
However the same process and system can be realtime if someone wants it to.
Think of the same mapping system, tied to the CAD systems used by a 911 call center - the map can be made to work in realtime if it has a flow of realtime data. We are working on a custom version displaying Amber Alerts - it will check the newswires every 15 minutes automatically, and do its best to place an Icon on the map in a relevant location - not realtime but close, and it wont require an analyst to sit there and babysit.
The difference between a realtime system and a near realtime system is that the realtime version requires automation of the news gathering, which leaves out any decent decision making about which articles are appropriate and which are not.