Characterizing the cultural niches of North American birds

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Justin G. Schuetz and Alison Johnston at PNAS: “Efforts to mitigate the current biodiversity crisis require a better understanding of how and why humans value other species. We use Internet query data and citizen science data to characterize public interest in 621 bird species across the United States. We estimate the relative popularity of different birds by quantifying how frequently people use Google to search for species, relative to the rates at which they are encountered in the environment.

In intraspecific analyses, we also quantify the degree to which Google searches are limited to, or extend beyond, the places in which people encounter each species. The resulting metrics of popularity and geographic specificity of interest allow us to define aspects of relationships between people and birds within a cultural niche space. We then estimate the influence of species traits and socially constructed labels on niche positions to assess the importance of observations and ideas in shaping public interest in birds.

Our analyses show clear effects of migratory strategy, color, degree of association with bird feeders, and, especially, body size on niche position. They also indicate that cultural labels, including “endangered,” “introduced,” and, especially, “team mascot,” are strongly associated with the magnitude and geographic specificity of public interest in birds. Our results provide a framework for exploring complex relationships between humans and other species and enable more informed decision-making across diverse bird conservation strategies and goals….(More)”.

Digital Data for Development

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

LinkedIn: “The World Bank Group and LinkedIn share a commitment to helping workers around the world access opportunities that make good use of their talents and skills. The two organizations have come together to identify new ways that data from LinkedIn can help inform policymakers who seek to boost employment and grow their economies.

This site offers data and automated visuals of industries where LinkedIn data is comprehensive enough to provide an emerging picture. The data complements a wealth of official sources and can offer a more real-time view in some areas particularly for new, rapidly changing digital and technology industries.

The data shared in the first phase of this collaboration focuses on 100+ countries with at least 100,000 LinkedIn members each, distributed across 148 industries and 50,000 skills categories. In the near term, it will help World Bank Group teams and government partners pinpoint ways that developing countries could stimulate growth and expand opportunity, especially as disruptive technologies reshape the economic landscape. As LinkedIn’s membership and digital platforms continue to grow in developing countries, this collaboration will assess the possibility to expand the sectors and countries covered in the next annual update.

This site offers downloadable data, visualizations, and an expanding body of insights and joint research from the World Bank Group and LinkedIn. The data is being made accessible as a public good, though it will be most useful for policy analysts, economists, and researchers….(More)”.

Open government for all? Co-creating digital public services for older adults through data walks

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Juliane Jarke: “The purpose of this paper is to review interventions/methods for engaging older adults in meaningful digital public service design by enabling them to engage critically and productively with open data and civic tech.

The paper evaluates data walks as a method for engaging non-tech-savvy citizens in co-design work. These were evaluated along a framework considering how such interventions allow for sharing control (e.g. over design decisions), sharing expertise and enabling change.

Within a co-creation project, different types of data walks may be conducted, including ideation walks, data co-creation walks or user test walks. These complement each other with respect to how they facilitate the sharing of control and expertise, and enable change for a variety of older citizens.

Data walks are a method with a low-threshold, potentially enabling a variety of citizens to engage in co-design activities relating to open government and civic tech.

Such methods address the digital divide and further social participation of non-tech-savvy citizens. They value the resources and expertise of older adults as co-designers and partners, and counter stereotypical ideas about age and ageing….(More)”.

Predictive Big Data Analytics using the UK Biobank Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Ivo D Dinov et al: “The UK Biobank is a rich national health resource that provides enormous opportunities for international researchers to examine, model, and analyze census-like multisource healthcare data. The archive presents several challenges related to aggregation and harmonization of complex data elements, feature heterogeneity and salience, and health analytics. Using 7,614 imaging, clinical, and phenotypic features of 9,914 subjects we performed deep computed phenotyping using unsupervised clustering and derived two distinct sub-cohorts. Using parametric and nonparametric tests, we determined the top 20 most salient features contributing to the cluster separation. Our approach generated decision rules to predict the presence and progression of depression or other mental illnesses by jointly representing and modeling the significant clinical and demographic variables along with the derived salient neuroimaging features. We reported consistency and reliability measures of the derived computed phenotypes and the top salient imaging biomarkers that contributed to the unsupervised clustering. This clinical decision support system identified and utilized holistically the most critical biomarkers for predicting mental health, e.g., depression. External validation of this technique on different populations may lead to reducing healthcare expenses and improving the processes of diagnosis, forecasting, and tracking of normal and pathological aging….(More)”.

Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jennifer Valentino-DeVries at the New York Times: “….The warrants, which draw on an enormous Google database employees call Sensorvault, turn the business of tracking cellphone users’ locations into a digital dragnet for law enforcement. In an era of ubiquitous data gathering by tech companies, it is just the latest example of how personal information — where you go, who your friends are, what you read, eat and watch, and when you do it — is being used for purposes many people never expected. As privacy concerns have mounted among consumers, policymakers and regulators, tech companies have come under intensifying scrutiny over their data collection practices.

The Arizona case demonstrates the promise and perils of the new investigative technique, whose use has risen sharply in the past six months, according to Google employees familiar with the requests. It can help solve crimes. But it can also snare innocent people.

Technology companies have for years responded to court orders for specific users’ information. The new warrants go further, suggesting possible suspects and witnesses in the absence of other clues. Often, Google employees said, the company responds to a single warrant with location information on dozens or hundreds of devices.

Law enforcement officials described the method as exciting, but cautioned that it was just one tool….

The technique illustrates a phenomenon privacy advocates have long referred to as the “if you build it, they will come” principle — anytime a technology company creates a system that could be used in surveillance, law enforcement inevitably comes knocking. Sensorvault, according to Google employees, includes detailed location records involving at least hundreds of millions of devices worldwide and dating back nearly a decade….(More)”.

Access to Algorithms

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Hannah Bloch-Wehba: “Federal, state, and local governments increasingly depend on automated systems — often procured from the private sector — to make key decisions about civil rights and civil liberties. When individuals affected by these decisions seek access to information about the algorithmic methodologies that produced them, governments frequently assert that this information is proprietary and cannot be disclosed. 

Recognizing that opaque algorithmic governance poses a threat to civil rights and liberties, scholars have called for a renewed focus on transparency and accountability for automated decision making. But scholars have neglected a critical avenue for promoting public accountability and transparency for automated decision making: the law of access to government records and proceedings. This Article fills this gap in the literature, recognizing that the Freedom of Information Act, its state equivalents, and the First Amendment provide unappreciated legal support for algorithmic transparency.

The law of access performs three critical functions in promoting algorithmic accountability and transparency. First, by enabling any individual to challenge algorithmic opacity in government records and proceedings, the law of access can relieve some of the burden otherwise borne by parties who are often poor and under-resourced. Second, access law calls into question government’s procurement of algorithmic decision making technologies from private vendors, subject to contracts that include sweeping protections for trade secrets and intellectual property rights. Finally, the law of access can promote an urgently needed public debate on algorithmic governance in the public sector….(More)”.

Statistics Estonia to coordinate data governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Miriam van der Sangen at CBS: “In 2018, Statistics Estonia launched a new strategy for the period 2018-2022. This strategy addresses the organisation’s aim to produce statistics more quickly while minimising the response burden on both businesses and citizens. Another element in the strategy is addressing the high expectations in Estonian society regarding the use of data. ‘We aim to transform Statistics Estonia into a national data agency,’ says Director General Mägi. ‘This means our role as a producer of official statistics will be enlarged by data governance responsibilities in the public sector. Taking on such responsibilities requires a clear vision of the whole public data ecosystem and also agreement to establish data stewards in most public sector institutions.’…

the Estonian Parliament passed new legislation that effectively expanded the number of official tasks for Statistics Estonia. Mägi elaborates: ‘Most importantly, we shall be responsible for coordinating data governance. The detailed requirements and conditions of data governance will be specified further in the coming period.’ Under the new Act, Statistics Estonia will also have more possibilities to share data with other parties….

Statistics Estonia is fully committed to producing statistics which are based on big data. Mägi explains: ‘At the moment, we are actively working on two big data projects. One project involves the use of smart electricity meters. In this project, we are looking into ways to visualise business and household electricity consumption information. The second project involves web scraping of prices and enterprise characteristics. This project is still in an initial phase, but we can already see that the use of web scraping can improve the efficiency of our production process.’ We are aiming to extend the web scraping project by also identifying e-commerce and innovation activities of enterprises.’

Yet another ambitious goal for Statistics Estonia lies in the field of data science. ‘Similarly to Statistics Netherlands, we established experimental statistics and data mining activities years ago. Last year, we developed a so-called think-tank service, providing insights from data into all aspects of our lives. Think of birth, education, employment, et cetera. Our key clients are the various ministries, municipalities and the private sector. The main aim in the coming years is to speed up service time thanks to visualisations and data lake solutions.’ …(More)”.

Black Wave: How Networks and Governance Shaped Japan’s 3/11 Disasters

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Daniel Aldrich: “Despite the devastation caused by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 60-foot tsunami that struck Japan in 2011, some 96% of those living and working in the most disaster-stricken region of Tōhoku made it through. Smaller earthquakes and tsunamis have killed far more people in nearby China and India. What accounts for the exceptionally high survival rate? And why is it that some towns and cities in the Tōhoku region have built back more quickly than others?

Black Wave illuminates two critical factors that had a direct influence on why survival rates varied so much across the Tōhoku region following the 3/11 disasters and why the rebuilding process has also not moved in lockstep across the region. Individuals and communities with stronger networks and better governance, Daniel P. Aldrich shows, had higher survival rates and accelerated recoveries. Less connected communities with fewer such ties faced harder recovery processes and lower survival rates. Beyond the individual and neighborhood levels of survival and recovery, the rebuilding process has varied greatly, as some towns and cities have sought to work independently on rebuilding plans, ignoring recommendations from the national governments and moving quickly to institute their own visions, while others have followed the guidelines offered by Tokyo-based bureaucrats for economic development and rebuilding….(More)”.

Big Data Applications in Governance and Policy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction to Special Issue of Politics and Governance by Sarah Giest and Reuben Ng: ” Recent literature has been trying to grasp the extent as to which big data applications affect the governance and policymaking of countries and regions (Boyd & Crawford, 2012; Giest, 2017; Höchtl, Parycek, & Schöllhammer, 2015; Poel, Meyer, & Schroeder, 2018). The discussion includes the comparison to e-government and evidence-based policymaking developments that existed long before the idea of big data entered the policy realm. The theoretical extent of this discussion however lacks some of the more practical consequences that come with the active use of data-driven applications. In fact, much of the work focuses on the input-side of policymaking, looking at which data and technology enters the policy process, however very little is dedicated to the output side.

In short, how has big data shaped data governance and policymaking? The contributions to this thematic issue shed light on this question by looking at a range of factors, such as campaigning in the US election (Trish, 2018) or local government data projects (Durrant, Barnett, & Rempel, 2018). The goal is to unpack the mixture of big data applications and existing policy processes in order to understand whether these new tools and applications enhance or hinder policymaking….(More)”.

New Data-Driven Map Shows Spread of Participation in Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Loren Peabody at the Participatory Budgeting Project: “As we celebrate the first 30 years of participatory budgeting (PB) in the world and the first 10 years of the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), we reflect on how far and wide PB has spread–and how it continues to grow! We’re thrilled to introduce a new tool to help us look back as we plan for the next 30+ years of PB. And so we’re introducing a map of PB across the U.S. and Canada. Each dot on the map represents a place where democracy has been deepened by bringing people together to decide together how to invest public resources in their community….

This data sheds light on larger questions, such as what is the relationship between the size of PB budgets and the number of people who participate? Looking at PBP data on processes in counties, cities, and urban districts, we find a positive correlation between the size of the PB budget per person and the number of people who take part in a PB vote (r=.22, n=245). In other words, where officials make a stronger commitment to funding PB, more people take part in the process–all the more reason to continue growing PB!….(More)”.