This tech tells cities when floods are coming–and what they will destroy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Ben Paynter at FastCompany: “Several years ago, one of the eventual founders of One Concern nearly died in a tragic flood. Today, the company specializes in using artificial intelligence to predict how natural disasters are unfolding in real time on a city-block-level basis, in order to help disaster responders save as many lives as possible….

To fix that, One Concern debuted Flood Concern in late 2018. It creates map-based visualizations of where water surges may hit hardest, up to five days ahead of an impending storm. For cities, that includes not just time-lapse breakdowns of how the water will rise, how fast it could move, and what direction it will be flowing, but also what structures will get swamped or washed away, and how differing mitigation efforts–from levy building to dam releases–will impact each scenario. It’s the winner of Fast Company’s 2019 World Changing Ideas Awards in the AI and Data category.

[Image: One Concern]

So far, Flood Concern has been retroactively tested against events like Hurricane Harvey to show that it could have predicted what areas would be most impacted well ahead of the storm. The company, which was founded in Silicon Valley in 2015, started with one of that region’s pressing threats: earthquakes. It’s since earned contracts with cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Cupertino, as well as private insurance companies….

One Concern’s first offering, dubbed Seismic Concern, takes existing information from satellite images and building permits to figure out what kind of ground structures are built on, and what might happen if they started shaking. If a big one hits, the program can extrapolate from the epicenter to suggest the likeliest places for destruction, and then adjust as more data from things like 911 calls and social media gets factored in….(More)”.


The Smart Enough City

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Open Access Book by Ben Green: “Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself….(More)”.

Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission: “Following the publication of the draft ethics guidelines in December 2018 to which more than 500 comments were received, the independent expert group presents today their ethics guidelines for trustworthy artificial intelligence.

Trustworthy AI should respect all applicable laws and regulations, as well as a series of requirements; specific assessment lists aim to help verify the application of each of the key requirements:

  • Human agency and oversight: AI systems should enable equitable societies by supporting human agency and fundamental rights, and not decrease, limit or misguide human autonomy.
  • Robustness and safety: Trustworthy AI requires algorithms to be secure, reliable and robust enough to deal with errors or inconsistencies during all life cycle phases of AI systems.
  • Privacy and data governance: Citizens should have full control over their own data, while data concerning them will not be used to harm or discriminate against them.
  • Transparency: The traceability of AI systems should be ensured.
  • Diversity, non-discrimination and fairness: AI systems should consider the whole range of human abilities, skills and requirements, and ensure accessibility.
  • Societal and environmental well-being: AI systems should be used to enhance positive social change and enhance sustainability and ecological responsibility.
  • Accountability: Mechanisms should be put in place to ensure responsibility and accountability for AI systems and their outcomes.

In summer 2019, the Commission will launch a pilot phase involving a wide range of stakeholders. Already today, companies, public administrations and organisations can sign up to the European AI Alliance and receive a notification when the pilot starts.

Following the pilot phase, in early 2020, the AI expert group will review the assessment lists for the key requirements, building on the feedback received. Building on this review, the Commission will evaluate the outcome and propose any next steps….(More)”.

Artists as ‘Creative Problem-Solvers’ at City Agencies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sophie Haigney at The New York Times: “Taja Lindley, a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist and activist, will spend the next year doing an unconventional residency — she’ll be collaborating with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, working on a project that deals with unequal birth outcomes and maternal mortality for pregnant and parenting black people in the Bronx.

Ms. Lindley is one of four artists who were selected this year for the City’s Public Artists in Residence program, or PAIR, which is managed by New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs. The program, which began in 2015, matches artists and public agencies, and the artists are tasked with developing creative projects around social issues.

Ms. Lindley will be working with the Tremont Neighborhood Health Action Center, part of the department of health, in the Bronx. “People who are black are met with skepticism, minimized and dismissed when they seek health care,” Ms. Lindley said, “and the voices of black people can really shift medical practices and city practices, so I’ll really be centering those voices.” She said that performance, film and storytelling are likely to be incorporated in her project.

The other three artists selected this year are the artist Laura Nova, who will be in residence with the Department for the Aging; the artist Julia Weist, who will be in residence with the Department of Records and Information Services; and the artist Janet Zweig, who will be in residence with the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability. Each will receive $40,000. There is a three-month-long research phase and then the artists will spend a minimum of nine months creating and producing their work….(More)”.

Platform Surveillance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Editorial by David Murakami Wood and Torin Monahan of Special Issue of Surveillance and Society: “This editorial introduces this special responsive issue on “platform surveillance.” We develop the term platform surveillance to account for the manifold and often insidious ways that digital platforms fundamentally transform social practices and relations, recasting them as surveillant exchanges whose coordination must be technologically mediated and therefore made exploitable as data. In the process, digital platforms become dominant social structures in their own right, subordinating other institutions, conjuring or sedimenting social divisions and inequalities, and setting the terms upon which individuals, organizations, and governments interact.

Emergent forms of platform capitalism portend new governmentalities, as they gradually draw existing institutions into alignment or harmonization with the logics of platform surveillance while also engendering subjectivities (e.g., the gig-economy worker) that support those logics. Because surveillance is essential to the operations of digital platforms, because it structures the forms of governance and capital that emerge, the field of surveillance studies is uniquely positioned to investigate and theorize these phenomena….(More)”.

Crowdsourcing a Constitution

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Case Study by Cities of Service: “Mexico City was faced with a massive task: drafting a constitution. Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera, who oversaw the drafting and adoption of the 212-page document, hoped to democratize the process. He appointed a drafting committee made up of city residents and turned to the Laboratório para la Ciudad (LabCDMX) to engage everyday citizens. LabCDMX conducted a comprehensive survey and employed the online platform Change.org to solicit ideas for the new constitution. Several petitioners without a legal or political background seized on the opportunity and made their voices heard with successful proposals on topics like green space, waterway recuperation, and LGBTI rights in a document that will have a lasting impact on Mexico City’s governance….(More)”.

Responsible Data Governance of Neuroscience Big Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by B. Tyr Fothergill et al: “Current discussions of the ethical aspects of big data are shaped by concerns regarding the social consequences of both the widespread adoption of machine learning and the ways in which biases in data can be replicated and perpetuated. We instead focus here on the ethical issues arising from the use of big data in international neuroscience collaborations.

Neuroscience innovation relies upon neuroinformatics, large-scale data collection and analysis enabled by novel and emergent technologies. Each step of this work involves aspects of ethics, ranging from concerns for adherence to informed consent or animal protection principles and issues of data re-use at the stage of data collection, to data protection and privacy during data processing and analysis, and issues of attribution and intellectual property at the data-sharing and publication stages.

Significant dilemmas and challenges with far-reaching implications are also inherent, including reconciling the ethical imperative for openness and validation with data protection compliance, and considering future innovation trajectories or the potential for misuse of research results. Furthermore, these issues are subject to local interpretations within different ethical cultures applying diverse legal systems emphasising different aspects. Neuroscience big data require a concerted approach to research across boundaries, wherein ethical aspects are integrated within a transparent, dialogical data governance process. We address this by developing the concept of ‘responsible data governance’, applying the principles of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) to the challenges presented by governance of neuroscience big data in the Human Brain Project (HBP)….(More)”.

Crowdsourced reports could save lives when the next earthquake hits

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Charlotte Jee at MIT Technology Review: “When it comes to earthquakes, every minute counts. Knowing that one has hit—and where—can make the difference between staying inside a building and getting crushed, and running out and staying alive. This kind of timely information can also be vital to first responders.

However, the speed of early warning systems varies from country to country. In Japan  and California, huge networks of sensors and seismic stations can alert citizens to an earthquake. But these networks are expensive to install and maintain. Earthquake-prone countries such as Mexico and Indonesia don’t have such an advanced or widespread system.

A cheap, effective way to help close this gap between countries might be to crowdsource earthquake reports and combine them with traditional detection data from seismic monitoring stations. The approach was described in a paper in Science Advances today.

The crowdsourced reports come from three sources: people submitting information using LastQuake, an app created by the Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Centre; tweets that refer to earthquake-related keywords; and the time and IP address data associated with visits to the EMSC website.

When this method was applied retrospectively to earthquakes that occurred in 2016 and 2017, the crowdsourced detections on their own were 85% accurate. Combining the technique with traditional seismic data raised accuracy to 97%. The crowdsourced system was faster, too. Around 50% of the earthquake locations were found in less than two minutes, a whole minute faster than with data provided only by a traditional seismic network.

When EMSC has identified a suspected earthquake, it sends out alerts via its LastQuake app asking users nearby for more information: images, videos, descriptions of the level of tremors, and so on. This can help assess the level of damage for early responders….(More)”.

Responsible data sharing in international health research: a systematic review of principles and norms

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Shona Kalkman, Menno Mostert, Christoph Gerlinger, Johannes J. M. van Delden and Ghislaine J. M. W. van Thiel: ” Large-scale linkage of international clinical datasets could lead to unique insights into disease aetiology and facilitate treatment evaluation and drug development. Hereto, multi-stakeholder consortia are currently designing several disease-specific translational research platforms to enable international health data sharing. Despite the recent adoption of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the procedures for how to govern responsible data sharing in such projects are not at all spelled out yet. In search of a first, basic outline of an ethical governance framework, we set out to explore relevant ethical principles and norms…

We observed an abundance of principles and norms with considerable convergence at the aggregate level of four overarching themes: societal benefits and value; distribution of risks, benefits and burdens; respect for individuals and groups; and public trust and engagement. However, at the level of principles and norms we identified substantial variation in the phrasing and level of detail, the number and content of norms considered necessary to protect a principle, and the contextual approaches in which principles and norms are used....

While providing some helpful leads for further work on a coherent governance framework for data sharing, the current collection of principles and norms prompts important questions about how to streamline terminology regarding de-identification and how to harmonise the identified principles and norms into a coherent governance framework that promotes data sharing while securing public trust….(More)”

Opening Internet Monopolies to Competition with Data Sharing Mandates

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Policy Brief by Claudia Biancotti (PIIE) and Paolo Ciocca (Consob): “Over the past few years, it has become apparent that a small number of technology companies have assembled detailed datasets on the characteristics, preferences, and behavior of billions of individuals. This concentration of data is at the root of a worrying power imbalance between dominant internet firms and the rest of society, reflecting negatively on collective security, consumer rights, and competition. Introducing data sharing mandates, or requirements for market leaders to share user data with other firms and academia, would have a positive effect on competition. As data are a key input for artificial intelligence (AI), more widely available information would help spread the benefits of AI through the economy. On the other hand, data sharing could worsen existing risks to consumer privacy and collective security. Policymakers intending to implement a data sharing mandate should carefully evaluate this tradeoff….(More).