Global Manhunt Pushes Limits of Social Mobilization
An international team of researchers, including computer scientist Manuel Cebrian from the University of California, San Diego, has won a seemingly impossible challenge: tracking down a group of “suspects” in a jewel heist on two continents in five different cities, within just 12 hours. The goal was to find five suspects. Cebrian’s group, named CrowdScanner, found three. That was far better than their nearest competitor, which located just one “suspect”—at a much later time.