EMBERS is an anticipatory intelligence system forecasting population-level events in multiple countries of Latin America. A deployed system from 2012, EMBERS has been generating alerts 24x7 by ingesting a broad range of data sources including news, blogs, tweets, machine coded events,currency rates, and food prices. In this paper, we describe our experiences operating EMBERS continuously for nearly 4 years, with specific attention to the discoveries it has enabled, correct as well as missed forecasts, lessons learnt from participating in a forecasting tournament, and our perspectives on the limits of forecasting including ethical considerations.
['Sathappan Muthiah', 'Patrick Butler', 'Rupinder Paul Khandpur', 'Parang Saraf', 'Nathan Self', 'Alla Rozovskaya', 'Liang Zhao', 'Jose Cadena', 'Chang-Tien Lu', 'Anil Kumar S. Vullikanti', 'Achla Marathe', 'Kristen Maria Summers', 'Graham Katz', 'Andy Doyle', 'Jaime Arredondo', 'Dipak K. Gupta', 'David R. Mares', 'Naren Ramakrishnan']
EMBERS at 4 years: Experiences operating an Open Source Indicators Forecasting System