Twitter / Balaji Sowmyanarayan

Monday, October 01, 2007

Wisdom of Crowd Weather Prediction

Idea:Weather as a source of profit! Much of economic activity in some form or another is a response to Weather and its cycle. With economy becoming more and more knowledge centric, weather information and weather related prediction( knowledge) becomes source of profit. Hackshaven Harford of NOAA build in Secondlife has an interesting idea for the complex compute intensive weather prediction biz. He is proposing to simply ask the crowd. Let the wisdom of the crowd work for the prediction!
Execution:Amazon Mturk with automated script that rewards bonuses based on accuracy of prediction post fact. The script could be coupled weather derivative market through a mashup with WeatherBill like service.
Profit: Predicting weather( or the lack of it) is a big biz. Weather is something where everyone participates already. Market linking it and wisdom of crowd linking it will widen the market and thereby widen the opportunities.

This could be a good way to widen the base of Mturk Workers on a world wide basis. This will engage the workers on a daily basis. The variable reward makes it very sticky.

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