Stefaan Verhulst

Montreal plans to become a Smart City with free WiFi and open data

Curated on May 26, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Ian Hardy at MobileSyrup: “Earlier this month, the Coderre Administration announced the Montreal Action Plan that includes 70 projects that will turn Montreal into a “smart city.”

The total allocated budget of $23 million is broken down into 6 sections — listed below with the official description — and is targeted for completion by the end of 2017. Apart from ensuring a fast fiber network, “unleashing municipal data,” and the rollout of “intelligent transport systems” that will bring your real-time info on your subway/bus/car service, the city plans to deploy free WiFi.

According to the statement, Montreal will be deploying wireless access points in 750 locations to have facilitate free public WiFi. The larger idea is to “enhance the experience of citizens, boost tourism and accelerate economic development of Montreal.”…

1. Wi-Fi public: Deploy APs to extend coverage in the area, creating a harmonized experience and provide uniform performance across the network to enhance the experience of citizens, boost tourism and accelerate the economic development of Montreal.

2. Very high speed network, multiservice: Adopt a telecommunications policy, create one-stop telecommunications and urban integrate the telecommunications component in the charter of all major urban projects, so that all players in the Montreal community have access a fiber network at high speed and multi-service, that meets their current and future needs.

3. Economic Niche smart city: Create an environment facilitating the emergence of companies in the smart city economic niche, multiply the sources of innovation for solving urban problems and simplify doing business with the City, so that Montreal becoming a leader in innovation as smart city and accelerate economic development.

4. Intelligent Mobility: Make available all data on mobility in real time, implement intelligent transport systems, intermodal and integrated deployment and support solutions designed to inform users to optimize mobility users in real time on the entire territory.

5. Participatory democracy: Unleashing municipal data, information management and governance and adapt the means of citizen participation to make them accessible online, to improve access to the democratic process and consolidate the culture of transparency and accountability.

6. Digital Public Services: Making a maximum of services available on a multitude of digital channels, involve citizens in the development of services and create opportunities for all, to become familiar with their use, to provide access to municipal services 24/7, across multiple platforms….(More)”

We Have Always Been Social

Curated on May 26, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Zizi Papacharissi introducing the first issue of Social Media + Society: “I have never been a fan of the term “social media.” Not only had I not been a fan of the term but I had also expressed this distaste frequently and fervently, in public talks and in writing, academic and not. The reason why I dislike the term, as I regularly explain, is that all media are social. All media foster communication and by definition are social. This is not that groundbreaking a position anymore, although it has been my mantra ever since I started studying the social character of the Internet in the mid-1990s. In fact, it is a position held by many of our Editorial Board members who have contributed to this issue, and you will encounter variations of it as you read through this first issue.

To term some media social implies that there are other media that are perhaps anti-social, or even not social at all—asocial. It also invites comparisons between media based on how social each medium is. But each medium is social in its own unique way and invites particular social behaviors, its own form of sociality. Finally, the term identifies as social platforms that are no more, and perhaps less so, social than media not characterized by that moniker, such as the telephone.

But, whether I like it or not, “social media” has become mainstream, and I have come to terms with that. …

Social Media + Society is thus deeply committed to advancing beyond an understanding of social media that is temporally bound. …

To this end, I invited members of our Editorial Board to contribute short essays that would serve to outline the scope for Social Media + Society, in defining how we understand social media. ….The result is a magnificent set of essays presented in the democracy of alphabetical order, serving as our first issue, and a manifesto for our journal. I hope you enjoy reading them and are inspired by them as much as I have been. (More)”

The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering: Mastering Complexity

Curated on May 26, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Sanjoy Mahajan: “…shows us that the way to master complexity is through insight rather than precision. Precision can overwhelm us with information, whereas insight connects seemingly disparate pieces of information into a simple picture. Unlike computers, humans depend on insight. Based on the author’s fifteen years of teaching at MIT, Cambridge University, and Olin College, The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering shows us how to build insight and find understanding, giving readers tools to help them solve any problem in science and engineering.

To master complexity, we can organize it or discard it. The Art of Insight in Science and Engineeringfirst teaches the tools for organizing complexity, then distinguishes the two paths for discarding complexity: with and without loss of information. Questions and problems throughout the text help readers master and apply these groups of tools. Armed with this three-part toolchest, and without complicated mathematics, readers can estimate the flight range of birds and planes and the strength of chemical bonds, understand the physics of pianos and xylophones, and explain why skies are blue and sunsets are red. (Public access version of the book).

Participatory Governance

Curated on May 23, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book chapter by Stephanie L. McNulty and Brian Wample in “Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: An Interdisciplinary, Searchable, and Linkable Resource”: “Efforts to engage new actors in political decision-making through innovative participatory programs have exploded around the world in the past 25 years. This trend, called participatory governance, involves state-sanctioned institutional processes that allow citizens to exercise voice and vote in public policy decisions that produce real changes in citizens’ lives. Billions of dollars are spent supporting these efforts around the world. The concept, which harks back to theorists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Stuart Mill, has only recently become prominent in theories about democracy. After presenting the foundational research on participatory governance, the essay notes that newer research on this issues falls into three areas: (i) the broader impact of these experiments; (ii) new forms of engagement, with a focus on representation, deliberation, and intermediation; and (iii) scaling up and diffusion. The essay concludes with a research agenda for future work on this topic….(More)”

Smart Cities, Smart Governments and Smart Citizens: A Brief Introduction

Curated on May 23, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Gabriel Puron Cid et al in the International Journal of E-Planning Research (IJEPR): “Although the field of study surrounding the “smart city” is in an embryonic phase, the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in urban settings is not new (Dameri and Rosenthal-Sabroux, 2014; Toh and Low, 1993; Tokmakoff and Billington, 1994). Since ancient times, cities and metropolitan areas have propelled social transformation and economic prosperity in many societies (Katz and Bradley, 2013). Many modern urban sites and metros have leveraged the success and competitiveness of ICTs (Caragliu, Del Bo and Nijkamp, 2011). At least in part, the recent growth of smart city initiatives can be attributed to the rapid adoption of mobile and sensor technologies, as well as the diversity of available Internet applications (Nam and Pardo, 2011; Oberti and Pavesi, 2013).

The effective use of technological innovations in urban sites has been embraced by the emergent term “smart city”, with a strong focus on improving living conditions, safeguarding the sustainability of the natural environment, and engaging with citizens more effectively and actively (Dameri and Rosenthal-Sabroux, 2014). Also known as smart city, digital city, or intelligent city, many of these initiatives have been introduced as strategies to improve the utilization of physical infrastructure (e.g., roads and utility grids), engage citizens in active local governance and decision making, foster sustainable growth, and help government officials learn and innovate as the environment changes….(More)”

Big Data. Big Obstacles.

Curated on May 21, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Dalton Conley et al. in the Chronicle of Higher Education: “After decades of fretting over declining response rates to traditional surveys (the mainstay of 20th-century social research), an exciting new era would appear to be dawning thanks to the rise of big data. Social contagion can be studied by scraping Twitter feeds; peer effects are tested on Facebook; long-term trends in inequality and mobility can be assessed by linking tax records across years and generations; social-psychology experiments can be run on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service; and cultural change can be mapped by studying the rise and fall of specific Google search terms. In many ways there has been no better time to be a scholar in sociology, political science, economics, or related fields.

However, what should be an opportunity for social science is now threatened by a three-headed monster of privatization, amateurization, and Balkanization. A coordinated public effort is needed to overcome all of these obstacles.

While the availability of social-media data may obviate the problem of declining response rates, it introduces all sorts of problems with the level of access that researchers enjoy. Although some data can be culled from the web—Twitter feeds and Google searches—other data sit behind proprietary firewalls. And as individual users tune up their privacy settings, the typical university or independent researcher is increasingly locked out. Unlike federally funded studies, there is no mandate for Yahoo or Alibaba to make its data publicly available. The result, we fear, is a two-tiered system of research. Scientists working for or with big Internet companies will feast on humongous data sets—and even conduct experiments—and scholars who do not work in Silicon Valley (or Alley) will be left with proverbial scraps….

To address this triple threat of privatization, amateurization, and Balkanization, public social science needs to be bolstered for the 21st century. In the current political and economic climate, social scientists are not waiting for huge government investment like we saw during the Cold War. Instead, researchers have started to knit together disparate data sources by scraping, harmonizing, and geocoding any and all information they can get their hands on.

Currently, many firms employ some well-trained social and behavioral scientists free to pursue their own research; likewise, some companies have programs by which scholars can apply to be in residence or work with their data extramurally. However, as Facebook states, its program is “by invitation only and requires an internal Facebook champion.” And while Google provides services like Ngram to the public, such limited efforts at data sharing are not enough for truly transparent and replicable science….(More)”

WFP And OCHA Join Forces To Make Data More Accessible

Curated on May 21, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

World Food Programme Press Release: “The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) have teamed up to provide access to global data on hunger and food insecurity. The data can be used to understand the type of food available in certain markets, how families cope in the face of food insecurity and how WFP provides food assistance in emergencies to those in need.

The data is being made available through OCHA’s Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX), an open platform for sharing crisis data. The collaboration between WFP, the world’s largest humanitarian organization fighting hunger worldwide, and OCHA began at the height of the Ebola crisis when WFP shared its data on food market prices in affected countries in West Africa.

With funding from the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, WFP has since been able to make large amounts of its data available dynamically, making it easier to integrate with other systems, including HDX.

From there, HDX built an interactive visualization for Food Prices data that allows a range of users, from the general public to a data scientist, to explore the data in insightful ways. The same visualization is also available on the WFP VAM Shop….(More)“

World of Labs

Curated on May 21, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

NESTA: “Governments across the world are creating innovation teams and labs to help them find new ways of tackling the complex challenges of the 21st century. If you want to get a sense of the scale of this global trend then check out this searchable global map of innovation labs worldwide.

There are about 80 in total represented here – colour-coded for the level of government (blue for local, green for regional, red national and yellow international). In this map I’ve concentrated on labs inside government excluding the dozens of public and social innovation labs (#psilabs) like Nesta, MaRS Solutions Lab or The GovLab that work alongside the public sector though they themselves are outside it. I’ve probably left lots of government i-teams and labs out of this list – so please suggest more and I’ll add them in.

Public innovation labs can claim to be a global movement not just in sheer numbers of teams and labs worldwide but also because of the momentum behind the creation of new ones, at a current rate of least one a month. Though some of the most celebrated examples e.g. Denmark’s MindLab are well into their second decade about a third of the labs set out here have been born in the last two years.

The early wave of scenario-based creative “future centres” (like the Netherlands-based De Werf) was soon followed by the kind of design-based lab that continues to dominate much of the thinking and practice in the field. But lately this has been complemented by a new wave of teams using other tools (data and technology or behavioural economics) as well as the more hybrid approach often adopted by innovation delivery teams at a municipal level, particularly in the US. At a global level the shift to a lab-based approach in development policy has been particularly marked….(More)”

Shifting from research governance to research ethics: A novel paradigm for ethical review in community-based research

Curated on May 21, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jay Marlowe and Martin Tolich: “This study examines a significant gap in the role of providing ethical guidance and support for community-based research. University and health-based ethical review committees in New Zealand predominantly serve as ‘gatekeepers’ that consider the ethical implications of a research design in order to protect participants and the institution from harm. However, in New Zealand, community-based researchers routinely do not have access to this level of support or review. A relatively new group, the New Zealand Ethics Committee (NZEC), formed in 2012, responds to the uneven landscape of access for community-based research. By offering ethical approval inclusive of the review of a project’s study design outside institutional settings, NZEC has endeavoured to move beyond a gatekeeping research governance function to that of bridge-building. This change of focus presents rich possibilities but also a number of limitations for providing ethical review outside conventional institutional contexts. This paper reports on the NZEC’s experience of working with community researchers to ascertain the possibilities and tensions of shifting ethics review processes from research governance to a focus on research ethics in community-based participatory research….(More)”