Stefaan Verhulst
Book by Mike Hodson, Julia Kasmire, Andrew McMeekin, John G. Stehlin, and Kevin Ward: “This title takes the broadest possible scope to interrogate the emergence of “platform urbanism”, examining how it transforms urban infrastructure, governance, knowledge production, and everyday life, and brings together leading scholars and early-career researchers from across five continents and multiple disciplines.
The volume advances theoretical debates at the leading edge of the intersection between urbanism, governance, and the digital economy, by drawing on a range of empirically detailed cases from which to theorize the multiplicity of forms that platform urbanism takes. It draws international comparisons between urban platforms across sites, with attention to the leading edges of theory and practice and explores the potential for a renewal of civic life, engagement, and participatory governance through “platform cooperativism” and related movements. A breadth of tangible and diverse examples of platform urbanism provides critical insights to scholars examining the interface of digital technologies and urban infrastructure, urban governance, urban knowledge production, and everyday urban life.
The book will be invaluable on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, as well as for academics and researchers in these fields, including anthropology, geography, innovation studies, politics, public policy, science and technology studies, sociology, sustainable development, urban planning, and urban studies. It will also appeal to an engaged, academia-adjacent readership, including city and regional planners, policymakers, and third-sector researchers in the realms of citizen engagement, industrial strategy, regeneration, sustainable development, and transport….(More)”.
Rebecca Root at Devex: “A lack of data on groundwater is impeding water management and could jeopardize climate resilience efforts in some places, according to recent research by WaterAid and the HSBC Water Programme.
Groundwater is found underground in gaps between soil, sand, and rock. Over 2.5 million people are thought to depend on groundwater — which has a higher tolerance to droughts than other water sources — for drinking.
The report looked at groundwater security and sustainability in Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Nepal, and Nigeria, where collectively more than 160 million people lack access to clean water close to home. It found that groundwater data tends to be limited — including on issues such as overextraction, pollution, and contamination — leaving little evidence for decision-makers to consider for its management.
“There’s a general lack of information and data … which makes it very hard to manage the resource sustainably,” said Vincent Casey, senior water, sanitation, and hygiene manager for waste at WaterAid…(More)”.
MIT CISR research:”…has found that interorganizational data sharing is a top concern of companies; leaders often find data sharing costly, slow, and risky. Interorganizational data sharing, however, is requisite for new value creation in the digital economy. Digital opportunities require data sharing 2.0: cross-company sharing of complementary data assets and capabilities, which fills data gaps and allows companies, often collaboratively, to develop innovative solutions. This briefing introduces three sets of practices—curated content, designated channels, and repeatable controls—that help companies accelerate data sharing 2.0….(More)”.
Paper by Andreas Backhaus: “…In the public debate, one can encounter at least three concepts that measure the deadliness of SARS-CoV-2: the case fatality rate (CFR), the infection fatality rate (IFR) and the mortality rate (MR). Unfortunately, these three concepts are sometimes used interchangeably, which creates confusion as they differ from each other by definition.
In its simplest form, the case fatality rate divides the total number of confirmed deaths by COVID-19 by the total number of confirmed cases of infections with SARS-CoV-2, neglecting adjustments for future deaths among current cases here. However, the number of confirmed cases is believed to severely underestimate the true number of infections. This is due to the asymptomatic process of the infection in many individuals and the lack of testing capacities. Hence, the CFR presumably reflects rather an upper bound to the true lethality of SARS-CoV-2, as its denominator does not take the undetected infections into account.
The infection fatality rate seeks to represent the lethality more accurately by incorporating the number of undetected infections or at least an estimate thereof into its calculation. Consequently, the IFR divides the total number of confirmed deaths by COVID-19 by the total number of infections with SARS-CoV-2. Due to its larger denominator but identical numerator, the IFR is lower than the CFR. The IFR represents a crucial parameter in epidemiological simulation models, such as that presented by Ferguson et al. (2020), as it determines the number of expected fatalities given the simulated spread of the disease among the population.
The methodological challenge regarding the IFR is, of course, to find a credible estimate of the undetected cases of infection. An early estimate of the IFR was provided on the basis of data collected in the course of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in February 2020. Mizumoto et al. (2020) estimate that 17.9% (95% confidence interval: 15.5-20.2) of the cases were asymptomatic. Russell et al. (2020), after adjusting for age, estimate that the IFR among the Diamond Princess cases is 1.3% (95% confidence interval: 0.38-3.6) when considering all cases, but 6.4% (95% confidence interval: 2.6–13) when considering only cases of patients that are 70 years and older. The serological studies that are currently being conducted in several countries and localities serve to provide more estimates of the true number of infections with SARS-CoV-2 that have occurred over the past few months….(More)”.
Paper by Marcella Alsan, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, Minjeong Joyce Kim, Stefanie Stantcheva, and David Y. Yang: “The respect for and protection of civil liberties are one of the fundamental roles of the state, and many consider civil liberties as sacred and “nontradable.” Using cross-country representative surveys that cover 15 countries and over 370,000 respondents, we study whether and the extent to which citizens are willing to trade off civil liberties during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the largest crises in recent history. We find four main results. First, many around the world reveal a clear willingness to trade off civil liberties for improved public health conditions. Second, consistent across countries, exposure to health risks is associated with citizens’ greater willingness to trade off civil liberties, though individuals who are more economically disadvantaged are less willing to do so. Third, attitudes concerning such trade-offs are elastic to information. Fourth, we document a gradual decline and then plateau in citizens’ overall willingness to sacrifice rights and freedom as the pandemic progresses, though the underlying correlation between individuals’ worry about health and their attitudes over the trade-offs has been remarkably constant. Our results suggest that citizens do not view civil liberties as sacred values; rather, they are willing to trade off civil liberties more or less readily, at least in the short-run, depending on their own circumstances and information….(More)”.
Oren Etzioni and Michael Li in Wired: “…To achieve increased transparency, we advocate for auditable AI, an AI system that is queried externally with hypothetical cases. Those hypothetical cases can be either synthetic or real—allowing automated, instantaneous, fine-grained interrogation of the model. It’s a straightforward way to monitor AI systems for signs of bias or brittleness: What happens if we change the gender of a defendant? What happens if the loan applicants reside in a historically minority neighborhood?
Auditable AI has several advantages over explainable AI. Having a neutral third-party investigate these questions is a far better check on bias than explanations controlled by the algorithm’s creator. Second, this means the producers of the software do not have to expose trade secrets of their proprietary systems and data sets. Thus, AI audits will likely face less resistance.
Auditing is complementary to explanations. In fact, auditing can help to investigate and validate (or invalidate) AI explanations. Say Netflix recommends The Twilight Zone because I watched Stranger Things. Will it also recommend other science fiction horror shows? Does it recommend The Twilight Zone to everyone who’s watched Stranger Things?
Early examples of auditable AI are already having a positive impact. The ACLU recently revealed that Amazon’s auditable facial-recognition algorithms were nearly twice as likely to misidentify people of color. There is growing evidence that public audits can improve model accuracy for under-represented groups.
In the future, we can envision a robust ecosystem of auditing systems that provide insights into AI. We can even imagine “AI guardians” that build external models of AI systems based on audits. Instead of requiring AI systems to provide low-fidelity explanations, regulators can insist that AI systems used for high-stakes decisions provide auditing interfaces.
Auditable AI is not a panacea. If an AI system is performing a cancer diagnostic, the patient will still want an accurate and understandable explanation, not just an audit. Such explanations are the subject of ongoing research and will hopefully be ready for commercial use in the near future. But in the meantime, auditable AI can increase transparency and combat bias….(More)”.
Article by Ammaarah Martinus and Faisal Naru: “In March 2018, the metropolitan government of Cape Town, on South Africa’s Western Cape, announced that it had avoided “Day Zero”—the day the dams supplying the city would have reached 13.5 percent capacity, the point at which the water supply to most of the city would be turned off. Earlier in the year, the city had been forecast to hit Day Zero on April 22, 2018.
Fortunately, it didn’t come to this. The city managed to develop a successful water savings campaign which stopped the taps from running dry in Cape Town. Had this not occurred, residents would have had faced severe restrictions on water use and their daily habits would have been upended. For instance, they would have had to visit water collection sites to service their basic needs.
The city’s bold and comprehensive communication strategy around Day Zero, which focused on changing behaviors and implementing clever nudges, was a big part of the success story. Here’s how it unfolded….(More)
Paper by Ans Irfan, Ankita Arora, Christopher Jackson and Celina
Valencia: “World Health Organization (WHO) estimates indicate the United States of America has the highest novel Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) burden in the world, with over 5 million confirmed cases and nearly 165,000 associated deaths as of August 14th, 2020 (WHO 2020). As the COVID-19 mortality and morbidity has disproportionately impacted populations who experience vulnerabilities due to structural issues such as racism (Laurencin and McClinton 2020; Lin II and Money 2020; Martin 2020; Kim et al. 2020), it has become increasingly necessary to take this opportunity and intentionally codify diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices in the policymaking process. To encourage and facilitate this, we synthesize existing literature to identify best practices that can not only be used to inform COVID-19-related public policy activities but will also continue to inform inclusive policymaking processes in the future. We identify specific tools for policymakers at all levels of government to better operationalize the DEI framework and enact inclusive, equitable public policies as a result….(More)”.
Paper by LucianaCingolani: “For a number of years scholars have theorized about a change of paradigm in the collaborative practices between governments and citizens as a result of the newly emerged many-to-many forms of connectivity. A vibrant agenda on open government has flourished since, with critical advances on the conceptual front, but much less empirical testing of its propositions.
This article makes use of a recognized typology of co-production initiatives in order to implement a Cox hazards survival analysis of 465 open government platforms from a global sample in 87 countries. Its main findings suggest that government-initiated collaborations have the lowest risk of termination and that citizen-to-government initiatives the highest. They also show that while internationally-exerted pressure for openness favors the genesis of open government platforms, it does not affect their survival chances…(More)”.
Article by Joe Appleton: “…many governments are implementing new and exciting ideas to try and boost citizen engagement and overcome the obstacles that prevent citizen involvement. Here are a few examples of how cities are engaging with citizens in the 21st century.
REVOLUTIONIZING CITY HALL
The city of San Francisco has been working hard to improve resident participation. To help solve city-wide problems, the city created a program called Civic Bridge. Civic Bridge is a platform that can be used to bring together residents and volunteers from the private sector with city staff. This allows city hall to work closely with private sector professionals to solve public challenges.
By enlisting the help of hundreds of otherwise unreachable residents, solutions to city problems such as homelessness, access to healthcare, and other social issues, fast and effective results could be produced.
Civy is another program that has been designed to put city officials directly in touch with residents. Civy is a cloud-based platform that gives citizens a voice, in a confidential environment, that allows citizens to add their thoughts and opinions on citywide projects, helping officials make better-informed decisions.
REMOVING BARRIERS
Physically traveling to a city hall can be an immense barrier to citizen participation. However, some innovative cities are taking steps to bring city hall into resident’s homes. To do this, they are enlisting help from platforms such as CitizenLab. CitizenLab was first launched in 2016, and it has proven itself to be a practical medium for many European cities. The platform boosts citizen engagement by sending data directly to members of the public via a user-friendly mobile interface. Officials can see the results from surveys and questionnaires in real-time, and use the data collected to make decisions based on real citizen insights.
Civocracy is a similar digital platform that has been designed to promote citizen participation, champion collaborative governance projects, and improve city hall efficiency. It focuses on direct communication between residents and officials, giving citizen’s a platform to discuss projects and allow officials to get ideas from the public. This service is currently being used in Amsterdam, Nice, Potsdam, Brussels, Lyon, and many other European cities.
Platforms like these are essential for removing the obstacles that many citizens face when interacting with city governments. As a result, cities can enjoy a more citizen-centric form of smart government.
BOOSTING PARTICIPATION
There’s more to citizen engagement than giving and receiving feedback for ideas and projects. To boost participation, some cities have really embraced 21st century trends.
For example, two cities in the UK (London and Plymouth) have been experimenting with crowdfunding for potential city projects. Proposals for urban projects are listed on popular crowdfunding websites, in an open and transparent manner, allowing residents and investors to directly contribute funds to projects and initiatives that they’re interested in. In some cases, the local authorities will support winning proposals by matching the raised funds.
Crowdfunding can be used as a platform for citizens to show off their own ideas and initiatives, and highlight any potential problems in the community. The service can be used for a wide range of applications, from restoring derelict buildings to installing social health programs.
Allowing citizens to show their approval with their personal funding is one way to boost participation, however, there should be other ways to attract attention and allow citizens to voice their opinions too. Maptionnaire is one such way.
Maptionnaire is an online tool that creates a virtual map of a city, where residents can freely offer their advice, opinions, and feelings about areas of the city or specific projects. Users can simply leave comments that can explicitly inform city officials about their feelings.
This is a great tool that can provide widely representative data about city plans. The platform can also take votes about certain projects and garner fast results. Since it can be accessed remotely, it also allows for citizens to say what they want, without feeling intimidated by a crowd or swayed by popular opinion.
NURTURING IDEAS
Encouraging public feedback is one way to boost participation, but some local authorities are going a step further by directly asking citizens for solutions. By allowing citizens to formulate their own solutions and give them the tools to realize those solutions, interest in city governance can grow exponentially.
For example, Lublin is the first city in Poland to adopt an initiative called the Green Citizen’s Budget. This participatory budget scheme welcomed residents to put forward ideas to improve urban greenery, and allocated a budget of PLN 2 million (450.000 €) and teamed residents up with technical experts to help realize those plans.
Turning to citizens for inspiration is a popular way of generating new ideas and seeing fresh perspectives. The city of Sydney and the New South Wales government in Australia has recently launched an innovative competition that presents an opportunity for citizens to submit daring proposals to solve public space problems….(More)”.